A Youth-Driven Healthcare Home
The Health Justice Center (HJC) at RYSE is a liberatory healthcare home for West Contra Costa youth and young adults. Programs, services, and supports are driven by youth inquiry and feedback, not by insurance or units of productivity and billing.
All services, programs, and supports are provided at no-cost to young people, and in partnership with skilled BIPOC staff, practitioners, and partners.
Our Call to Action
For over 16 years, RYSE has worked to directly address the needs and priorities of young people. RYSE enacts healing-centered strategies and culturally affirming modalities grounded in racial, gender justice, and disability justice through holistic healing supports, mentorship, advocacy, policy, organizing, and power-building.
Over the years, we have heard from young people the desire for RYSE to hold and offer expanded holistic health services onsite. Young people have shared the need and desire for onsite health support and care that feels loving, non-judgemental, responsive, and affirming. They have shared the need for culturally-rooted and culturally-attuned supports and care for all aspects of health, including individual and collective care that acknowledges and addresses the social determinants of health injustice that impact every aspect of their health and well-being.
Our Core Principles
Systems and adults responsible for young people are safe, loving, welcoming and responsive.
Systems, both in policy and practice, are responsive to the priorities and needs of young people as defined by young people.
Young people feel loved.
Young people have the emotional, physical, and political safety to acquire tools, skills, and resources they need to understand and change inequities.
Our Services
The HJC is an expansion and deepening of RYSE’s health and health justice services and partnerships, including:
• Counseling, therapy, and case management
• Crisis intervention and supports, including RYSE’s Youth Emergency Fund
• Community violence intervention (HVIP) for gun violence and assault
• Housing supports and navigation
• Primary care services and navigation
• Holistic and homeopathic services, including acupressure, reiki, meditation, herbal education
• Dance and movement programs and classes
• Tailored supports and advocacy for young people living with disabilities
• Health education and advocacy in areas of nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, relationship health, substance use, mental health
• Opportunities for young people to explore health career pathways to become the next generation of heath justice practitioners and leaders
• Training, consult, and technical assistance with, for, and by health and health justice partners towards an ecosystem of collective care
• As a resiliency hub, the HJC will provide resources, sanctuary and space for young people directly threatened by climate disasters, political or community crises
“RYSE is more than just a place. RYSE is more than just a building, just a campus. RYSE is a home. And not just because of the building itself,but because of the people in it.” ”