Angela Diaz: Hi, my name is Angela Diaz, and I would like to talk with you about why it's so 

important to have another lesson in young adult friend culture in your 

healthcare systems. When people hear the word culture, they usually think 

about place of origin, language, and things like that. But after working around 

the globe with youth, with young people, I really have come to understand that 

there's a culture of other lessons. And the lives that they live today are very 

complex and there's tremendous stress in many of their lives.

Angela Diaz: So we really need to understand and appreciate that when we work with them 

and we need to help them feel comfortable, we need for them to feel that we 

are not judging them, that we're there really to try to help them, that we are in 

this together in whatever it is that they want to achieve, we are trying to 

facilitate that process in the context of their development.

Angela Diaz: So it's very important to understand the culture of adolescents. The research 

also shows that when you provide services in a way that is teen-friendly, that 

increases the use by young people of your services. They come, much more 

likely to come, when you provide teen-friendly services. The Mount Sinai 

Adolescent Health Center is a learning organization, we are never static. We are 

around for 50 years and we are always evolving, always changing based on the 

needs of young people or what they tell us, or what is happening in the 

environment that affects them.

Angela Diaz: For example, when we began, we were not working with transgender. We had 

kids who were gay, lesbian, bisexual, question in youth, but now that there are 

many young people, they have come out saying now because they are 

transgender, so now we have a program about transgender youth. So we have 

to learn how to work with them. We have to learn about their needs. We have 

to learn how to work with their parents. And then now we really have 

tremendous expertise in that area.

Angela Diaz: The young people make our program. We are about them, but the other very 

important piece is the staff. So we can teach them the content and how to work 

with the young people, but they really have to be passionate. They have to 

understand that population, that we are there to serve them. That is really,

really key. The other thing that I think is important for young people is to sit and 

self-reflect it in the staff. So we try to really have a very diverse staff, not just in 

term of race, ethnicity, language, but also we have staff who are gay, who are 

lesbians, who are transgender. We have staff with disabilities. We have staff 

that really almost any young person coming to us can see themselves in that 

person.

Angela Diaz: And the reason that I think is so important is because a young person can look 

at themselves in that staff and see possibilities for them. It's not just about the 

connection and getting the services, but they see, "I can be a social worker. I can 

be a doctor. I can be a health educator," because a person that looks just like 

them is. And sometimes they had not had those life experiences before.
Angela Diaz: At the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, we have like 17 different 

disciplines. You know, as a physician, among adolescent medicine person, I'm 

not able to meet all of their needs. We need all these people with differing 

expertise to work together as a team and it's not enough just to have multiple 

disciplines. The services have to be delivered interdisciplinary. People have to 

work together around the young person. And even when we do the treatment 

plan, we bring all the different disciplines and then we work together. And for 

certain group of young people that we know have very complex needs, the staff 

may regularly and discuss the cases and do treatment plan together. It's really,

really important to do that.

Angela Diaz: Since we provide services from age 10 to 24, around age 22 or so, we start 

working with young people about transition. We tell them that when they turn 

24, they will age out of our services and that they will need to go to an adult 

system hopefully in medical home. So at age 22 we start working with them to 

prepare them for that transition. And as we get closer, we make sure for 

example, if they need a physical, they gather their physical. If they need an IUD, 

they get their IUD. If they need immunization, we just make sure they get 

everything that they need and then we help them connect to young adult 

system.

Angela Diaz: And often they want to keep coming back, but we encourage them to stay

there. And we just don't say, "You need to, you're aged out," we actually find 

places and connect them to those places, help them make the appointment to 

make it easier for them and give everything to them in writing or so just to 

facilitate that transition because it's not so easy to transition for young people.