By Anna Meredith

If you’ve heard of Planet Youth (PY) Homer by now, you probably know this prevention approach is a decades plus long community journey to support youth from childhood into adulthood. According to PY Homer 2025 data (of which a total of 168 students in grades 9-11 participated), many students report feeling connected to their community and connected to engaged families. So what does this mean to “support” youth? 

Being a pretty diverse community of various cultures, your answer for supporting youth may or may not be different from mine or from your neighbors. We tend to spend chosen time in our lives alongside folks who have similar value systems to ours. This ensures connection and safety, which we humans thrive on. Core values have so much to do with raising children. This diversity of local families creates community. 

As stated on the PY Homer Survey Report, “The Planet Youth data tool was designed to survey youth about key risk and protective factors that influence health and well-being across major community domains, including family, school, peer relationships and out-of-school time activities, as well as youth perceptions of substance use. Rather than focusing solely on outcomes, the survey measures the environmental conditions that shape young people’s daily lives — factors that communities can actively influence through policy, practice, and collective action.” This report and all the data is community-owned and thus, free and accessible on planetyouthhomer.org. 

As a long-term timeline, Planet Youth Homer likely would support families on a policy level in being able to spend the time they want with their children doing activities together, creating memories and passing on core values. On a more short-term timeline, what are the actions we, as a community, can align on to support our youth? According to nearly 300 youth who received the PY Homer data, they responded with these rankings as suggestions on where adults throughout the community should turn the action planning focus to support them: Youth Mental Health and Coping Skills followed by Sleep, Fatigue and Healthy Routines. 

Action planning can be based around core aspects of human health, regardless of moral values. We humans all need connection, sufficient sleep, and coping skills that help us relax and down-regulate, or techniques to energize our systems to up-regulate. The daily balance between mental wellness lies within this important category of mental health, sleep and healthy routines, and coping skills for life. 

While mental illness is commonly defined, Dr. Daniel J. Siegel metaphorically defines mental health in his book, “The Whole-Brained Child”, as, “… our ability to remain in a river of well-being. Imagine a peaceful river running through the countryside. That’s your river of well-being. Whenever you’re in the water peacefully floating around in your canoe, you feel like you’re generally in a good relationship with the world around you. You have a clear understanding of yourself, other people, and your life. You can be flexible and adjust when situations change. You’re stable and at peace.” 

Dr. Siegel goes on to describe the daily balance to remain in the river of well-being by striving to avoid bumping up against, or worse, landing against the “banks” of life. He describes the one river bank as representing chaos —  where you feel out of control — and the other bank as rigidity — where you are imposing your attempts at control on everything and everyone around you. While we move between these banks throughout our days, Dr. Siegel wrote, “When we’re closest to the banks of chaos or rigidity, we’re farthest from mental and emotional health.”

Considering this metaphor applies to all of us, PY Homer action planning will strive to set specific and attainable objectives towards aligning community ideas of supporting youth as they navigate their own mental well-being. Again according to the PY Homer Survey Report, “More than half of girls (58%) report having thought at some point that they needed help with their mental health, compared to 25% of boys. Fewer youth report seeking help, with 33% of girls and 12% of boys saying they have ever looked for mental health support. At the same time, awareness of available resources is relatively high, with 83% of youth reporting that they know about the mental health supports available to them, suggesting that barriers beyond awareness may be influencing help-seeking behavior.” These are just some highlights that the PY Homer data respondents shared. It’s up to us adults to consider how to take actions by supporting what’s already working for youth services and programming as well as identifying what’s needed.  

Please join this effort by tuning into the monthly Resilience Coalition meeting at KBC from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on June 10 (or via Zoom). This meeting will feature Seward Prevention Coalition’s Youth360 staff sharing their story of working and adapting the Icelandic Prevention Model to fit their community. Over recent years Seward’s community has identified and achieved specific outcomes through action planning and this has helped them quickly move the needle on supporting local youth to get engaged and feel a sense of belonging. 

It’s exciting to think of the ways our community of Homer and surrounding areas will realize the short and long term outcomes we will focus on this year and beyond. Please get involved to ensure your voice and your community sector is heard and represented. Reach out anytime with questions: anna@elementalconsulting.solutions.

Anna Meredith works for the Southern Kenai Peninsula Resilience Coalition as well as being a local parent and business owner.