The Youth Force
A note before the story. Maria is real — a patient I treated, her name changed to protect her. Liz is the vision: a single, composite portrait of the youth force we're building, walking the whole arc from a high school classroom to a health career. No one young person has traveled that entire path yet, because we're still building the road. But every stage of Liz's journey is already happening right now — with real students, real schools, real coordinators. After the story, you'll meet some of them.
I met Maria on a Tuesday, in my emergency department. She was sixteen years old.
Her family had moved not long before, and the move had taken everything that held her steady — her friends, her routines, the people who knew her without her having to explain. She came in after trying to end her life.
What I remember most is that she was angry. She wasn't angry that she had tried to die. She was angry that she had survived.
I left that room with one thought. She'd be back.
That's the cycle I lived for twenty years, from Johns Hopkins to San Diego. We admit a young person in crisis. We get them stable. We discharge them home — back to the same isolation, the same silence, the same empty space where help should be. And they come right back in. Again, and again, until one day a young person like Maria doesn't come back at all.
We are short more than 300,000 mental health workers in this country, in the middle of a youth mental health crisis where half a million kids a year show up in emergency departments like mine. There simply aren't enough people to catch Maria between the discharge and the next crisis. What breaks that cycle is a person in Maria's own world — close enough to be trusted, trained enough to know what to do, and there long before things fall apart.
So we're building the youth force.
The youth force are young people who are closest to the communities they serve. What's new is that they can now get certified to deliver the care young people like Maria need — and get paid to do it. We help them prepare, practice, and perform.
Maria has one of them now. Her name is Liz. Here's how Liz got here.
She learned to teach it before she ever needed it
When Liz was in high school, her school ran Health Force Academy, and inside it she found Health Force ALLY. She learned to take real mental health information and turn it into something a person her own age could actually use — short videos, plain-language guides, the kind of thing you'd send a friend who was struggling at midnight.
ALLY is the evidence-based model built by Advocates for All Youth, studied across seven peer-reviewed papers and two randomized trials with more than 3,000 young people in Colorado, Texas, and Alabama. The research shows real movement in resilience, confidence, and anxiety — and the young people who started out furthest behind made the biggest gains. We proved it close to home, too, with the Institute for Public Strategies in San Diego's South Bay.
For Liz, the lessons came home. She learned to talk about mental health out loud, to name a warning sign, to know when a hard week had become something that needed help. By the time she graduated, she had built real mental health education for her own friends and her own community, in a voice they trusted, because it was theirs.
She practiced the hard parts before they were real
When Liz decided to make this her work, she came up through a career-technical pathway at a school built for it, training toward the credential that lets a young person get paid for this care — the peer support specialist, the role where lived experience is the qualification.
This time the work was harder, so she practiced. Health Force Academy gave her AI patients, AI family members, and AI teammates, and let her rehearse the conversations until she was ready. She practiced hearing a warning sign in the way a kid texts. She practiced bringing a worried parent in as a partner instead of a bystander. She practiced the hardest judgment of all — knowing when a check-in and a good resource aren't enough, and it's time to bring in a licensed provider.
The pathway paid her, counted toward her graduation, and ended in a credential with real value in the job market. By the time she earned it, caring this way had simply become who she was.
Now she does it for real
Today Liz is a community school coordinator, and she carries a peer support specialist certification — the credential she trained toward, the one that says her own lived experience qualifies her to give care.
She works inside a school the way coordinators always have, except the job has changed underneath her. Where it used to mean tracking who needed what across spreadsheets and scraps of paper, she now has the same platform she trained on. The Well — the resource library every coordinator wishes they had — puts vetted mental health content and the local providers to connect families to within reach, right when a student or parent needs it.
So this time, when Maria is discharged, she isn't sent home alone. She's a student in Liz's school, and Liz finds her before the silence does. Liz builds trust first. Then she sends Maria a check-in — a "Welfie," a wellness selfie — and because it comes from someone Maria actually trusts, Maria answers. That answer tells Liz what Maria needs.
From there Liz turns insight into action. The AI assistant surfaces vetted resources from The Well, the library built for youth, by youth. And when community, content, and a coach aren't enough, Liz connects Maria to a certified provider so the care holds. Because Liz holds a peer support specialist certification, the support she gives can be reimbursed through Medicaid — so this kind of care can finally be a paid profession for the people best suited to give it.
What we're really building
The next time Maria leaves the hospital, I don't have to wonder when she'll be back. Someone is already there. Her attendance climbs. The readmission that used to be inevitable doesn't come. The coordinator who reached her stays, because the work now pays. Everybody wins — most of all Maria.
Now multiply Liz. A generation of young people who take their own hardest experiences and turn them into the thing that keeps the next kid safe. Students who learn to teach mental health and carry it home. Trainees who rehearse the hardest conversations before they ever have them. Community school coordinators who catch a young person between the discharge and the crisis that used to follow it.
That's the youth force. We started building it because of Maria. We're building it so the next Maria is never discharged alone.
The vision is already in motion
Liz is a composite. Every stage of her journey, though, is real work happening today across our schools, our partners, and our communities. Here's the proof.
The classroom is real. With the Institute for Public Strategies, we ran a youth-led mental health campaign across San Diego's South Bay and Border Region — a structured pathway (Lead With U into It Starts With Me) where young people moved from learning about mental health to creating it as peer messengers. The outcomes: comfort discussing mental health rose from 74% to 97%, awareness of where to find help rose from 72% to 95%, and youth-reported leadership and civic engagement climbed sharply by the end. Those young people's resources now live in The Well — including Abigail Carrillo's video about growing up with an absent parent, made so the next kid facing the same thing knows they're not alone. That's the narrative's whole premise, already real: a young person turning her hardest experience into something that protects someone else.
"Welfie brings together evidence-based public health and authentic youth engagement, empowering young people to co-create mental health resources that build peer connection, encourage help-seeking, and develop the next generation of leaders."
— Paola Rochin Bochm, Director of Prevention Programs, South Bay & Border Region, Institute for Public Strategies
"Interning with Welfie has given me the confidence to know I want to continue this work. Learning to create content that helps younger kids, their parents, and their teachers has been fulfilling in a way I know will be meaningful throughout my career."
— Amelia Mullins, Health Force Academy intern
And the content youth build is landing: in our IPS pilot, 88% of young people came away understanding their health better, 90% felt more confident knowing where to find help, and 75% felt less ashamed talking about mental health — rating the resources 4.58 out of 5.
The trainee pathway is real. Da Vinci Schools runs the career-technical pathway that turns interested students into credentialed health workers, aligned to a–g and pointed at real healthcare careers.
"Welfie is a partner that lightens the load and lifts the impact."
— Dr. Emily Greene, RN, PhD, Director of Health Services, Da Vinci Schools
Behind the training sits the ALLY evidence base — seven peer-reviewed studies and two RCTs with more than 3,000 participants — so what students rehearse is grounded in what actually works.
The professional is real. Liz's role already exists. Richard Gijon is a Lead Community Schools Site Program Coordinator at SDUSD, using Welfie to do exactly what Liz does in the story.
"Community Schools rely on youth-driven resources and strong coordination across schools, partners, and district priorities. Welfie provides youth-centered supports that resonate with students while strengthening coordination — helping schools track, communicate, and demonstrate impact for funding and long-term sustainability."
— Richard D. Gijon, Lead Community Schools Site Program Coordinator, SDUSD
In year one across SDUSD Community Schools, the platform reached 9 organizations and 24 communities, with 859 vetted resources in The Well and a 4.56 youth rating from students themselves. KIPP SoCal tells the same story:
"They made time to meet with our families and students, and took their feedback into account. Ensuring students have agency in making informed decisions is a pillar of excellence in education, and we're proud to be partners."
— Karla Armendariz, Regional Operations Manager, KIPP SoCal
The one piece still ahead is the through-line — a single young person who starts in a high school classroom and ends up a credentialed coordinator billing Medicaid for the youth she serves. The stages are all real; connecting them into one continuous, fundable career is what we're building next.
See it in the youth's own words in the IPS StoryMap, Welfie: Youth Reimagining Mental Health — Youth Stories from the South Bay, and across the work at welfie.ai.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24/7, free and confidential.