Addressing and preventing the major health issues affecting American adolescents requires collaborative and authentic youth participation. Our current time reflects a pendulum shift toward authentic youth voice and democratic participation in school wellness and reform. In this application article, we outline and describe a youthadult partnership curriculum to engage youth as change agents in their school community through youth-led research activities with publicly available and locally derived data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey. Getting to "Y": Youth Bring Meaning to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (GTY) is a positive youth development/youth participatory action research initiative, whereby students analyze their school health data and use those data as a starting point to create change in their school community. Focus groups were conducted with GTY youth and adult alumni in spring 2018. Results from the focus group data reinforce the GTY core assumptions and speak to the importance of structured opportunities for youth agency. GTY is a scalable, developmentally appropriate, resource-efficient, and empirically based curriculum that provides structured opportunities for youth-led research utilizing local Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey data as a youth-adult partnership model to increase youth agency and engagement with school/community health needs.

This article recounts the story of how one state in the United States is systematically amplifying student voice through school transformation efforts across a network of secondary schools (Grades 9 through 12; ages 14 to 18). The author is the creator and director of a statewide initiative entitled ‘Youth and Adults Transforming Schools Together’ (YATST). This organization provides training and support for students and educators, who work as partners to transform their schools. She explores the present state of youth voice in secondary schools in the United States through her experience as a school psychologist. The YATST action research model comes to life with examples of the efforts schools are undertaking. The key role of the institutional leader is explored. The urgency of amplifying student voice, despite its complexity, is justified by the thesis that ‘students are not the problem; they are part of the solution’.

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