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A Spotlight on Innovation: Highlights from the 2025 Healthy Teen Network Conference 

Launch partner Healthy Teen Network shares highlights from their annual national conference, which included for the first time an Innovation Showcase that enabled innovators to share their innovations and connect with each other.

Last month, adolescent health professionals from across the country gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for In Solidarity, the annual national conference hosted by Launch partner Healthy Teen Network. In Solidarity invited attendees to reflect on what it truly means to stand together—across movements, across communities, and especially within our own field of adolescent sexual and reproductive health. The conference included general sessions, workshops, roundtables, and the first-ever Innovation Showcase, that helped attendees uncovered new ways to channel support for sexual and reproductive health care and education and dreamed of new potential solutions, bright and boundless. 

Conferences like #HealthyTeen25 can supercharge innovation, concentrating knowledge exchange, feedback, and inspiration in one collaborative space. Some of the highlights included the Innovation Showcase and the innovation track of breakout sessions. 

Innovation Showcase 

The Innovation Showcase welcomed innovators from across the adolescent sexual and reproductive health field to share their solutions and opportunities with conference attendees. Over the course of three days, attendees got the chance to meet and engage with innovators in a variety of ways to share feedback about their solutions, make connections, and learn about new ways to meet the ever-changing needs of young people. 

Launch had the opportunity to participate in the Innovation Showcase, along with other incubator and accelerator hubs that support innovations and funded by the Office of Population Affairs, including Healthy Teen Network’s In/Tend incubator hub, Breakthrough (an accelerator hub led by Child Trends), and youthink (an incubator hub led by Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles).  

“We are excited we got the opportunity to participate in Healthy Teen Network’s first-ever Innovation Showcase,” said Katy Suellentrop, project director for the Launch Innovation Accelerator. “It was valuable to gather with other innovators and hear from other hubs like ours who are supporting innovations in the adolescent sexual and reproductive health space. We were also proud that one of our current Launch teams and one of our alumni Launch teams were selected to participate!” 

Two Launch innovation teams also participated: Fact Forward (Cohort 1 Launch alumni team) and Mad Hatter Wellness (a Cohort 2 team working on their innovation, Empowered Together). 

Katie Nordstrom Thune, president and executive director of Mad Hatter Wellness, shared about her team’s experience: “I am because we are. We are because I am. This is something that was shared by the keynote speaker on the first day of the conference that our team was able to attend as a part of the Innovation Showcase. It resonated with me then and continues to as I reflect back on the Showcase. Our team’s innovation focuses on curriculum for people with intellectual disabilities and it takes a “we” to make this curriculum meaningful and authentic. While sharing our innovation, we were able to connect with other innovators including a former Launch team. We were able to make new connections with people who are excited about the possibility of more sex and relationship education for people with disabilities.”  

Additional Innovation Showcase exhibitors included: 

Innovation Breakout Session Track 

#HealthyTeen25 also featured an innovation track for breakout sessions, which saw many inspiring and informative sessions centered on supporting the creation of new solutions. The incubator and accelerator hubs delivered several of these presentations, including: 

“Engaging Youth to Accelerate Innovation”  

Based on their work with the Launch Innovation Hub, Ozioma Anyanwu (RTI International) and Maria Aoki-Chavez and Amara Pilar Santos (Youth Collaboratory) shared recommendations for how programs can effectively engage young people in their work in a way that is authentic and collectively empowering for young people and adults.  

Effective youth engagement can help advance innovation within organizations that serve youth, particularly those focused on adolescent sexual health. This type of engagement is critical to ensure that youth-focused programming and practices remain relevant, responsive, and representative of young people and educators.  

“How to Design within Constraints: Brainstorming Solutions with Design Thinking to Meet the Moment”  

Sarah Cohen, Sophia Pennella, and Mona Desai (Children’s Hospital Los Angeles), and Jessie Romero Silver (Ithaca College), presented this interactive session. Attendees increased their own capacity to make change, learning about new tools and mindsets for individuals, teams, and communities to find creative solutions even within constraints. As leaders of the youthink Incubator Hub, presenters shared how design thinking—a practical, easy-to-use framework—can be used to find creative solutions even within constraints.

“Beyond the “It Factor”: Measuring and Strengthening Innovation Capacity” 

Innovation is often treated as an innate “it factor,” but it’s something we can intentionally cultivate. In this presentation, Hannah Rackers, Julia Tallant, Lisa Kim, and Jenn Rogers (Child Trends, Inc.) and Laura Lloyd and Milagros Garrido (Healthy Teen Network), of the In/Tend Incubator Hub, shared a tool they developed called the Innovation Capacity Assessment Tool (ICAT). This tool measures how ready individuals and teams are to generate, test, and refine solutions in adolescent health and well-being. In this session, attendees learned how ICAT data can be used to tailor coaching and capacity-building efforts, and how individuals and teams developed their innovation capacity over time.  

Save the Date Now to Share and Learn about Innovation at #HealthyTeen26 

While plans for next year’s Innovation Showcase are still in the early stages, Healthy Teen Network is excited to share that that we’ll be hosting it again at #HealthyTeen26. Save the date now for October 5-7, 2026, for #HealthyTeen26 in San Diego, CA, and to stay on top of the latest innovations. 

If you’re interested in presenting at #HealthyTeen26, stay tuned for the Call for Proposals, coming in February. You can submit a proposal for a Learning Add-On training, workshop session, or roundtable session. Sessions featuring innovation are always encouraged. To be the first to know about all conference news, make sure you’re on the Healthy Teen Network email list. 

Conferences like #HealthyTeen26 are a great opportunity to share your work and learn from others’ successes and challenges. Benefits include: 

  • Exposure to cutting-edge ideas. Get the latest resources, tools, and research, often before they are published or widely known, and gain early insight into emerging trends. 
  • Direct interaction with experts and innovators. Speak directly to the people behind new ideas—practitioners, researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and more. 
  • Cross-pollination of ideas. Meet colleagues working across adolescent health education and care, from across the country to gain fresh perspectives and spark new solutions. 
  • Hands-on learning. Workshops, roundtables, general sessions, and more let you see and try innovations firsthand, deepening understanding and inspiring creative thinking. 
  • Networking and collaboration. Build relationships that can lead to future partnerships, projects, and ventures. 
  • Inspiration and motivation. Energize and refresh as you hear success stories and engage with passionate peers, helping to rekindle creative energy. 
  • Feedback and testing. Bring your new ideas and solutions to test ideas, get feedback, and refine your work based on real-world reactions from colleagues who get it.