‘HIP’ teaches health class in peer-to-peer model

A South Florida nonprofit is working hard to show teens that it’s “HIP” to talk about all aspects of health.

The Health Information Project, or HIP, has been a growing presence in Miami-Dade and now Broward County. The concept is that the best way for high school students to learn and absorb information about physical and mental health is by learning from their peers.

Risa Berrin, HIP’s founder and executive director, started the concept over a decade ago in Miami, where she grew up. Now the program is present in every public high school in Miami-Dade and over half of Broward high schools. They’re also making inroads into some private schools.

The difference between similar programs is that HIP is based on a peer-to-peer model of learning. The idea is that teens will listen better to other teens when the information is shared.

“We’re empowering the students to conduct the programs,” Berrin said. “One important difference is that they are not peer counselors, they are peer educators. They’re providing the information to other students in classes, and they’re encouraging students to reach out to the experts at their school. And those experts might be the school counselor, the nurse or the trusted teacher.”

She said they didn’t invent the peer-to-peer model, but they did figure out how important it was for their efforts to tap into that approach.

“We realize that this model is very powerful, because kids look up to other kids and they especially look up to older kids at their school,” Berrin said. “We know that naturally kids are going to listen better when other students deliver a message, and we want to make sure that they have accurate information so they can make healthy decisions for themselves.”

Another dynamic in high schools is that younger students by default take the older students more seriously than kids their same age.

“We realized that, by allowing 11th- and 12th-graders to go into ninth-grade classrooms and offer their support, that would be impactful,” she said. “These older peer educators are coming into the freshman and sophomore classrooms early on in the school year, introducing themselves and letting them know that they are here for them. They also let the younger students know that they are providing health information and providing them with support.”

Berrin said the programs and standards for the curriculum were not created by the nonprofit or by the students.

“We have a myriad of academic and health experts that guide us on the curriculum,” she said. “And as science changes, our curriculum changes.”

The HIP program also uses a digital delivery system for the information, rather than using textbooks, which allows them to update their health information on a daily basis if needed.

The evidence shows that the program is working for the schools in which the HIP program has been introduced.

“We have 100% school retention rate in 13 years, which means we’ve never left a school and we’ve never been asked to

leave a school,” Berrin said. “We are very much embedded into the schools’ cultures, just like the National Honor Society or Key Club.”

Berrin said that she sees HIP as part of a larger trend in the health and mental health discussion today. And she said that simplicity is key to HIP’s success.

“I think in terms of mental health, schools realize that we need to do more,” she said. “And it’s not one of those things that requires millions of dollars and tons of people. It’s very simple to implement and this is something very easy that schools and school districts can do.”

How HIP became a reality

When Berrin was a student, she said she realized that kids weren’t comfortable talking about mental health issues. She learned that there were plenty of youths dealing with issues, whether it was depression, anxiety, eating disorders, drug addiction, or kids with learning disabilities and academic challenges.

As she grew up with her own health issues, Berrin had medical support, but she said she didn’t really have a way

to connect with other students about her problems. As she progressed into college, she had an epiphany.

“I think the turning point, where I realized there was a different way to reach high school students, I was in law school, and I was teaching a course called Street Law. My fellow school student friends would go into the public high schools in Miami, and we would teach a comprehensive, practical law curriculum that was relatable to high school students,” she said. “After doing that for a while, I realized that we should be doing something similar and more innovative with health education for students as well.”

After school, Berrin became interested in starting a health initiative that she could borrow and bring to schools that would help teens take charge of their own physical and mental issues.

“I started looking for a health program around the country that I originally thought that I could import to South Florida,” she said. “I thought that there had to be something innovative going on in the high school health education space in some other major city around the country that might work here.”

Instead, Berrin discovered that there were many programs surrounding specific topics, including bullying prevention, suicide prevention or teenage pregnancy prevention. But her take on all of these issues was that they all fell under the umbrella of mental health.

“There was nothing embedded into the culture of schools,” she said. “I kept seeing over and over again, the same archaic, traditional health education model based on adults.”

One of the challenges she faced when trying to get a program off the ground a dozen years ago was lack of innovation

going on in South Florida in the social entrepreneurial space.

“I had to seek out mentors and resources,” Berrin said. “I had to find people who understood that we needed to make changes in the approach to school-based mental health programs.”

She said she realized that she had to design a peer-to-peer model that was different from what she had seen around the country. She needed to figure out a way to empower students to be the implementers in schools.

“From the beginning, I was identifying students at each school to facilitate the program. I also decided to identify faculty sponsors for the students,” she said. “We wanted to tap into that existing infrastructure at schools. Working with the district and working with the principals, we identified a teacher, a

point person and a faculty sponsor at every school and they helped with the recruitment of the 11thand 12th-graders.”

She wanted HIP to be something in which each school had the autonomy to implement the program and there didn’t need to be a staff person there to do it.According to Berrin, when the juniors and seniors who are trained go into the classrooms with the freshmen, it is generally the first time that they’ve learned about any of this information.

“They don’t know what depression, anxiety, Type 2 diabetes or even an eating disorder is. No one’s having conversations about nutrition or about healthy relationships either,” she said. “HIP is just helping them to find what these topics are and then also helping them to navigate.”

Berrin said a kid who may have been struggling with anxiety didn’t actually know that’s what it was. Plus, they likely felt too much shame or confusion or sadness to reach out.

“The information is so empowering,” she said.

South Broward gets HIP

South Broward High School in Hollywood has shown success with the HIP program. The support has been strong from the principal on down to the teachers.

Therese Hollis, the school’s magnet coordinator, is also the HIP faculty sponsor there. The idea of her being a sponsor came from an assistant principal because of Hollis’ strong rapport with her students.

“I love helping the students,” she said. “I was a little bit hesitant about taking this on, since the program was new to the district and I realized it was a big deal. But I decided to go for it and threw myself into it.”

The program has taken root over the last couple of years.

“Our first year with HIP was amazing,” Hollis said. “Even though we ran it virtually because of COVID, there were students who shined, even though they’re generally reserved. The world opened up for the kids and were just so appreciative of it. We trained them to be Peer Health Educators and things that they learned were priceless. The students kept asking when the next training would be and what the next topic would be.”

After the program gained some traction at the school, students became enthusiastic about it as part of the education, according to Hollis.

“Some graduating students shared their stories with me and told me they were going to miss the HIP program because they were moving on to college,” she said. “They told me they wished that they had this when they were freshmen.”

Hollis said that she feels the HIP program is vital to the mental health of the students at South Broward.

“These days you see a lot of students who are very often depressed, because they feel labeled and lonely,” she said. “They may have abuse or other things in their background that makes it worse.”

Hollis said the fact that the health information is coming from other kids makes a much bigger impression on them than if teachers or other adults were the messengers.

“The students now appreciate that there’s an outlet where somebody can actually give them the information that they need,” she said. “And the fact that it’s coming from their peers is really important to them.”

South Broward Principal Patty Brown is an advocate for both the relatable topics that are included in the program and the fact that the students are the facilitators.

“I think the most beautiful part is the students who are passing on the education about health issues, because they typically relate better to their own peers,” she said. “The students know that they can talk to one another and talk in a way that they need to hear it.”

Part of the reason Brown can tell that the information is being absorbed by the students is that she sees their enthusiasm about it every day.

“To see the level of excitement that we see with the students who are going into the classrooms is key,” she said. “Without that, we’re not going to see the change we need to see. But the fact that students want to talk and students want to engage in mental health and everything related to health is real for them.”

HIP students’ stories

The HIP program has brought forward student leaders who might not have found an outlet for that energy otherwise. The personalities range from reserved to outgoing, but they all are engaged in the effort.

Lia Trescott, a senior at South Broward, is the student president of HIP at the school.

“I learned about HIP through my school, and I thought it sounded like a great way to be able to teach the freshmen class about important topics that aren’t really talked about,” she said. “I especially like that the topics are taught through kids who are more their age instead of other adults.”

The topics that drew Trescott to the program were mental health, relationships and food as health.

“The topics were very relatable to me during the quarantine era and in general,” she said. “I also realize that for a lot of kids that these issues have become more common. And a lot of people just didn’t know how to relate or what to do with that information. I felt that by joining HIP, I could share how to help other people going through difficult times.”

Alison Smith is the student vice president of HIP at South Broward. Her interest in HIP was more about being a facilitator to talk about important topics that are relevant to other students.

“When I heard about HIP and how they educated ninth-graders

about things that we didn’t know as freshmen, I wanted to participate,” she said. “One of the things I like about HIP is that it’s interactive. It’s not just that we read information, and then students just sit there and listen. They can interact, and they can add their own voice and their own opinions.”

Smith also said she likes relating to the younger students as well and something she sees as a strength of the program.

“The peer-to-peer model is better, because the way I describe it to the students is that ‘what is said in Vegas stays in Vegas’,” she said, smiling. “That was my way of getting at least one student to speak up. Then I noticed that as soon as one person said something, it was like a dam overflowing. As peer students, we can relate to them and they feel like they can talk to us better.”

SCOTT LUXOR / CONTRIBUTOR A student Peer Health Educator shares information with students at South Broward High School in Hollywood.