The Governor's Prevention Partnership partnered late last year with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield's Foundation to launch Healthy Conversations, a project to address issues of youth obesity and tobacco use. "Many times, mentors do not know exactly how to handle these sensitive topics when spending time with their mentees," said Roland Harmon, Program Manager for The Partnership's Connecticut Mentoring Partnership. "The toolkits are designed to guide mentors in having natural, appropriate conversations with their middle-school age mentees about healthy lifestyles in the course of their regular meetings."
The Partnership staff is working with Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters, Waterbury Youth Services, and several other mentoring programs to pilot and evaluate the toolkits. Once mentors in the pilot groups have provided feedback, the toolkits will be printed and widely distributed in Connecticut and nationally.
The Governor's Prevention Partnership provides support to over 150 mentoring programs, that serve 12,000 young people and is the Connecticut affiliate of MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership.