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Newswise — Program Manager Alejandra Cortez, LCSW, recognizes that working with high school students is as much about learning as it is about teaching. “When we are working with youth, I see amazing growth both in the students and in my own team,” Cortez explains.
Youth Advocate Dayanara Fonseca agrees. “We have worked with one student since her freshman year,” Fonseca says. “At first, she was really shy. But after a while, she started to become more outgoing, and now she has volunteered for so many outreach events and has spoken publicly about how the program has impacted her.”
Cortez and Fonseca work in the Substance Use Prevention and Treatment Program within Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. For the past five years, Cortez has led what was formerly known as Youth Partnerships for Success and is now called the Student Leaders Advocating for Youth (SLAY) Program. Cortez’s team works with a student leadership group called Youth in Power at two different Alliance charter schools in Northeast Los Angeles to provide substance use and overdose prevention training, as well as mentorship, mental health resources, and career preparation education, to dozens of high school students each year. The program recently received a $2 million grant from the U.S. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to continue carrying out its work.
The SLAY Program involves about 15 to 20 students at Alliance Tennenbaum Family Technology High School each year, and around the same number of students at Alliance Leichtman-Levine Family Foundation Environmental Science High School. “Both schools are in the same area close to Highland Park, but many of the students commute from all over,” Cortez explains. “I’m actually from that neighborhood myself, and that combined with the fact that I previously interned at CHLA while obtaining my Master of Social Work degree is why I was recruited to CHLA.”
Identifying areas of community need
The SLAY Program started out as the Youth Partnerships for Success program in the Fall of 2019, when Cortez’s team applied for and received their first SAMHSA grant supporting the program’s activities. “Our team, which consists of myself, a health educator, and Dayanara, who is a near peer-age youth advocate also from Northeast L.A., would meet with youth at these two schools once a week [and remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic] to determine specific topics on which we would focus our work,” Cortez says.
Selected topics included reducing cannabis and alcohol use, promoting positive mental health and self-care practices, and building resumes. While Fonseca would help to interpret the students’ ideas and concerns, the health educator would offer training sessions to educate students in these areas so that they could then present helpful information to their peers.
“And then once every year, we have a big summit on each school campus that is open to all youth, parents, and community members,” Cortez explains. “The SLAY Program students lead educational panels to inform their classmates on the issues we’ve been studying and to make a positive impact in their community.”
Other program activities have included the creation of a peer-focused zine on substance-use prevention strategies, as well as a community pet drive. “Our program was also involved during Red Ribbon Week at the schools,” Fonseca explains, referring to the largest drug-abuse prevention campaign in the country. “Our students handed out printed resources with information on substance use prevention and hosted activities for their fellow students.”
Sharing accomplishments and looking ahead
As the initial grant funding period neared its end, Cortez’s team applied for a new SAMHSA grant. They also presented their program’s achievements at the SAMHSA national conference in Washington, D.C.
In August 2024, they were awarded a new $2 million grant. “We’re hoping that with this new grant, we’ll be able to expand on the work that our past students accomplished,” Cortez says. “Our vision is for our students to have the tools and resources needed to become experts who can lead structural change on their campuses.”
One of the SLAY Program’s new goals is to create a resource guide that directs students to therapists and community-based support agencies. Cortez also wants to place more emphasis on addressing mental health challenges and how these issues intersect with substance use. “We want to take a harm reduction approach to our sessions, focusing on what particular substances do to your body and how people who are already using these substances can access resources to reduce their dependence on them,” she explains.
This work will also involve education on the use of naloxone, a medicine that can quickly reverse an opioid overdose. “We’re working with the schools to get youth trained to administer naloxone and to have more open conversations about opioid use prevention,” Cortez says. “In the large Latino community in Northeast L.A., many people might not be open to talking about these issues, but we want to change that.”
Fonseca also appreciates the work of the program to open new conversations in Northeast L.A. “Witnessing people in my community who are passionate about substance use prevention is something that I hadn’t seen before,” she says. “It’s really fulfilling to see that youth today are actively working with their schools and with us to enact change.”
The SLAY Program also works collaboratively with another student group led through CHLA, the Collective of Youth Leaders. This group is primarily focused on naloxone training and opioid overdose prevention and advocacy in several areas throughout Los Angeles.
Cortez looks to the future of the SLAY Program with excitement. “It’s such a privilege to get to work in the community where I grew up,” she says. “Our hope is to continue highlighting the value that young folks bring to the table and ensuring that their schools and communities listen to them, which can lead to enormously positive changes.”