Health Squad

Health Squad is a new nonprofit in Chicago that focuses on providing Chicago’s youth with the knowledge they need to make healthy decisions and to become healthy and successful adults. Founded in May 2018, we have a mission to promote healthy decision making among Chicago’s youth and adolescents by providing comprehensive sexual health education to middle and high school students.

Chicago, like most other large urban areas, has higher rates of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) than in the United States overall. In 2016, gonorrhea cases represents a 30% increase when compared to data from 2014. Also similarly to previous years, in 2016, adolescents, minorities and other at-risk populations were disproportionately affected with STDs.

Some progress has been made in recent years in reducing the STD health disparities, especially for African Americans, but much more needs to be done. African Americans and Latino populations make up over 83% of the CPS student enrollment. During the 2017 – 2018 school year, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) reported that 77% of CPS schools have not met minimum sexual health education teaching minute requirements, and 39% of schools did not provided any sexual health instruction. By partnering with CPS, Health Squad will be working to fill this gap.