About Healthy Lifestyles
As communities across the country grapple with how to help youth make healthy decisions related to legalized marijuana, Denver became the first U.S. city to address the need for a more modern approach to majriuana awareness and education through the design and implementation of Healthy Lifestyles, a 10-hour curriculum used by afterschool providers to lead middle school youth through a series of hands-on activities that provides balanced information and lets them explore how marijuana can impact their lives.
Meeting the Needs of the
Afterschool Community
After hearing directly from youth service providers and youth themselves that there were few resources with credible, relatable information, the DAA partnered with the YESS Institute to develop the Health Lifestyles curriculum. This new program, which has been implemented by afterschool providers across Denver, was made possible through a $1.5 million grant allocation that the DAA’s lead agency, the City and County of Denver’s Office of Children’s Affairs, advocated to receive from Colorado state and local recreational marijuana sales taxes to support early prevention efforts through afterschool and summer programs.
Scaling the Program & Sharing Lessons Learned with Our Peers
The DAA is in the process of making the Healthy Lifestyles curriculum available to other Colorado communities, and, as more states legalize marijuana, the DAA is sharing its lessons learned with afterschool intermediaries and advocates looking to use their collective voice to secure funding for youth programming through marijuana tax revenue.
