Guidance for Health Care Providers, Advocates, and Others
By Moira McLaughlin and Kenede Pratt-McCloud
July 8, 2026
School is out for the summer, but adolescents still need the guidance and care of a nurturing adult as well as tools and resources they can share with peers that help them stay healthy.
Adolescents benefit from having a team of adults who nurture them and help them grow and thrive. From parents to teachers, coaches to health care providers, the adults in a child’s life can support positive adolescent experiences. These nurturing relationships are tied to long-term health and can complement the important role peers play in supporting one another’s health.
Having Conversations on Healthy Relationships
Health care professionals are an important part of this continuum of care, which should include discussions about relationship abuse and trafficking. The data show why these conversations are so important:
- About 1 in 10 teens experience sexual dating violence.
- About 1 in 12 teens experience physical dating violence.
- FUTURES conducted a national survey in 2021 to better understand the prevalence of teen economic abuse, with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and with funding from the Allstate Foundation. Of the 2,845 youth who responded, as many as 68 percent had experienced a form of economic abuse.
- Without interventions, experiences with sexual, physical, and emotional abuse can lead to serious, negative, and long-term health consequences.
Strengthening Health Care Providers’ Capacity
As a part of FUTURES’ strategy to improve adolescent health, we have partnered with School-Based Health Alliance to provide education, convene communities of practice, disseminate resources teens can share with one another, and create tools that strengthen the capacity of school-based health staff and adolescent providers to prevent and respond to adolescent relationship abuse and human trafficking.
Here are some of our best resources and tools to help you – health care professionals, advocates, parents, and anyone who works with youth – feel confident in counseling adolescents about healthy relationships and responding to dating violence:
- Email us to get trained to implement “CUES,” which stands for Confidentiality, Universal Education, and Support, an evidence-based universal education strategy to educate patients about healthy relationships and the health impacts of intimate partner violence.
- Connect with us to learn about the dynamics of healthy teen relationships and signs that might indicate abuse.
- Encourage young people to join you in preventing this violence.
- Read about lessons learned on training providers and staff on healing and adolescent relationship abuse.
- Give teens with histories of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, this safety card, You Matter, which was developed in collaboration with young people, adolescent health providers, and school-based health center staff.
- Partner with teen dating abuse programs that can help any teen experiencing violence develop a safety plan.
The work health care professionals, including school-based health providers, do to help adolescents grow to be healthy, thriving adults is so important. Creating safe spaces to talk with adolescents about dating violence and healthy relationships will not only help teens understand what unhealthy relationships look like but will also help them grow into healthy adults.
