U.S. Youth.gov — Home / Youth Programs & Resources
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This guide provides parents and caregivers, educators, and healthcare professionals a better understanding of the threat vaping poses to America’s youth. Learn more.
This website supports youth facing challenges with drugs, alcohol, and mental health by connecting them with a community of people who can support them.
This report highlights important trends and changes in three key behaviors among U.S. high school students: nutrition, physical activity, and sleep. These activities are essential for improving students’ mental and physical health and for preventing chronic health conditions.
This webpage shares simple steps youth can take to stay safe from online threats.
This study explored how children are restrained when traveling in ride-share vehicles in an observational survey conducted from July to August 2022. The population of focus was children from birth to 12 years old transported in ride-share vehicles. About half of children observed were traveling unrestrained and the remainder were either using the vehicle seat belt or some type of child restraint system (CRS). A substantial percentage of infants (46%), toddlers (49%), and children (51%) were traveling unrestrained. The observed CRS use rate was 8.1%, with 41% of restrained children using seat belts.
This microsite provides an overview of the youth justice system, explaining why and how it differs from adult court, and a history of how it has changed over the years. Site resources provide access to the latest data on youth crime and effective strategies that communities have employed to hold young people accountable while advancing community safety.
These resources help teach young people how to deal with stress in healthy ways so they can feel good without turning to substances.
This guide (PDF, 117 pages) is designed to be a reliable resource on the most commonly used and misused drugs in the United States. The guide provides important information about the harms and consequences of drug use by describing a drug’s effects on the body and mind, overdose potential, origin, legal status, and other key facts.
Resource: Advising People on Using 988 Versus 911: Practical Approaches for Healthcare Providers
This guide provides key considerations for guiding people in the appropriate use of 988 and 911. It offers practical steps for integrating crisis care into daily practice, real world scenarios, sample scripts, and de-escalation techniques.
This event brought together fathers; fatherhood practitioners and advocates; federal, state, and local government leaders; Tribal representatives; social services agency representatives; researchers; and representatives from institutions of higher learning from across the nation to share knowledge, best practices, and innovative strategies for engaging and supporting fathers.
This report (PDF, 27 pages) examines demographic information such as the number of students who experienced homelessness, the type of housing they used when first identified by local educational agencies (LEAs) and particular groups of students who experienced homelessness. Additional information is provided on chronic absenteeism and the adjusted cohort graduation rates (ACGRs) of these students.
This free, secure mobile app designed specifically for education agencies allows personnel to walk around buildings and grounds and examine their safety, security, accessibility, and emergency preparedness. SITE ASSESS generates a customized to-do list that may be used in the short term and long term to address facility improvements, prompts teams to share pertinent information with first responders, and contains relevant resources on several education facility and preparedness topics.
This Issue Brief offers valuable information to State Mental Health Authorities (SMHA) about co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders (COD). The document highlights the commonality of CODs and negative outcomes in the absence of evidence-based integrated care. It also provides an overview of treatment barriers and potential solutions, and the effectiveness of integrated care.
Resource: 2025–26 Counselor Resource for Completing the FAFSA® Form
This resource (PDF, 42 pages) can help counselors and mentors guide students and their families through the 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form.
Learn more (PDF, 42 pages).
This Career Navigator is a tool for those interested in a job or career in the fields of mental health and substance use. There are many options to start and grow a behavioral health career—all with varying requirements for entry and maintenance, which often varies by state. This guide can help users understand the basic requirements to enter the field in each state.
This website compiles a select group of strategies based on the best available evidence to prevent or reduce public health problems like violence. They can help improve the health and well-being of communities.
This webpage provides a variety of pathways for students pursuing a degree in STEM (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics), educators looking for new ways to engage their classrooms, and citizen scientists enthusiastic about sharing their observations to contribute to authentic and meaningful research.
This lesson teaches a model of decision making that can help teens feel equipped and empowered to make decisions that maintain or improve their health and well-being. To put the decision-making model into practice, students will respond to scenarios involving polysubstance use, where they will apply the model. Each group will work through a given scenario, exploring options, considering outcomes, identifying the best option, developing action plans, and evaluating the decision. Through this process, students will develop the skills to make health-enhancing choices in challenging situations, as well as understand the risks of polysubstance use.
This webpage compiles resources to support efforts to promote mental health and substance use prevention in schools and on campuses and to provide safe learning environments.
Resource: Understanding an Overdose and How to Respond to One
This lesson is focused on recognizing and responding to overdoses. Drug overdoses continue to occur at alarmingly high levels. While most teens do not use drugs, overdose deaths for teens have risen to historic levels. The primary objective of this lesson is to empower students with the ability to demonstrate practices and behaviors that support individual and collective health and well-being, specifically by recognizing the signs of an overdose.
This guidance helps schools implement plans to help reduce illness and illness-related absenteeism by preventing the spread of common infections.
This document aims to provide parents of K–12 students information to help understand what it means when their school has a data breach, as well as provide tools and best practices to help navigate the sometimes confusing process of protecting children’s data in the event of a breach.
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