Youth Activism: In CHLA’s Collective of Youth Leaders, BIPOC Teens Take Action to Prevent Opioid Overdoses
Children's Hospital Los AngelesThe Collective of Youth Leaders (COYL) at Children's Hospital Los Angeles consists of high school-age youth from various Los Angeles schools who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). They regularly meet to discuss and address pressing issues in their communities. Such issues include social determinants of health, structural racism, and the harm that the war on drugs has had on low-income communities and Black, Indigenous, and other young people of color. Substance use prevention, and specifically the prevention of opioid overdoses, has become a major priority of the collective.