Youth Health Platform Mini Program

The core value of the youth health platform mini program is to integrate youth health data, popular science resources, and intervention paths that were previously scattered in hospitals, schools, and families into a portable port, solving three major pain points in one go: parents' difficulty in finding reliable health information, youths' shyness in seeking help for health problems, and the inability to implement campus health screening data. Currently, it has been piloted in nearly 20,000 primary and secondary schools in 17 provinces across the country.

When I talked about this with Sister Li, the school nurse of a middle school in Haidian, last month, she pulled out last year’s scoliosis screening file and showed it to me. It was a half-inch-thick paper form. One-third of the parent’s receipt attached at the back just scrawled “I understand.” The rest was either not handed in, or she repeatedly asked “Which hospital should I go to?” This spring, their school connected to the local youth health platform mini-program, and the data was synced to the corresponding parent's account on the day after the screening. In addition to a detailed description of the degree of scoliosis, it also included three short videos of corrective movements suitable for junior high school students to do during class, as well as a list of hospitals with pediatric orthopedics qualifications within 3 kilometers of their home. This time, the intervention follow-up rate jumped to 92%, which is nearly 60% higher than in previous years.

But everything has two sides, and the controversy over such small programs has never stopped. My friend Lao Zhou, who works in Internet data security, has complained to me several times, saying that teenagers' health data is too sensitive and the consequences if it is leaked would be disastrous. He said that he received a "height growth intervention course for under 12 years old" promoted by an organization last year. When he asked, he learned that the height and weight data filled in by the child's school had been leaked. Therefore, he has always had reservations about such small programs. He felt that "it would rather be slower to popularize it than to trade the child's privacy for convenience." But the grassroots school doctors on the other side felt aggrieved. Sister Li said that there was a girl in the second grade of junior high school who had been prone to depression for half a year, but neither her parents nor her teachers noticed it. It was an abnormality detected during her annual psychological screening. However, because there was no continuous emotional data tracking, by the time she was referred to a psychiatrist, it had already developed to a moderate state. "If there was a small program with a daily mood recording function, maybe it could have been discovered half a year earlier, and the child would not have to suffer so much."

I specifically did a test on my 14-year-old nephew. He was usually most annoyed by the "Secrets to Growing Taller for Teenagers" and "10 Foods You Must Eat to Prepare for Exams" that my sister forwarded to him. He deleted them when he saw them. However, after he logged into their school's mini-program with the intention of giving it a try, he actually checked in on it for three consecutive days. I asked him why he was so active. He said that the skin consultation there was completely anonymous. He didn’t dare to tell my sister about the acne on his forehead before because he was afraid of being scolded for “staying up late and playing games every day.” So he asked on the mini program “Can I use facial cleanser when I have acne on my forehead?” There was a volunteer dermatologist on the same day. In the reply, he didn’t say those “don’t stay up late and don’t eat spicy food” words. He directly recommended two amino acid cleansers suitable for minors. He also told him that if he didn’t clean up in two weeks, he would go to the hospital to see a dermatologist. It would be a hundred times more effective than my sister chasing after him every day and saying “don’t pick it with your hands”. There is also the 1,000-meter test that he is currently preparing for for the physical education high school entrance examination. The mini program will automatically adjust the weekly training volume based on his vital capacity and the results of the last test. It will also specifically remind him which muscles to focus on before exercising to prevent him from spraining his foot while running hard like last time and resting for half a month.

Oh, by the way, not all similar mini programs are easy to use. I used to do research for the education bureau of a county in the west. The version of the mini program they purchased last year was basically a collection of ready-made popular science articles. The fonts were as small as academic papers. When I clicked on them, they were all "Three Standards for Teenagers' Mental Health" and "Five Principles of Nutritional Intake." Let alone children, I was confused after reading it. The activity rate was less than 5% in the three months since it was launched online. It was basically just a decoration to cope with inspections. Some places are just fancy and add a bunch of functions for checking in and redeeming points. As a result, the prizes that can be exchanged are all "Excellent Essay Selection" and "Math Olympiad Exercise Set". Children will run away as soon as they see it, and no one is willing to use it.

Last week I attended an education and health industry salon, and a young product girl born in 1995 shared their experience in revision, saying that their previous version was also low in activity. Later, 20 junior high school students were invited to hold a three-day symposium, and the original large text was broken down into short videos ranging from 15 seconds to 1 minute, and a video called "Emotional Nest" was added. " is an anonymous section where children can complain if they have been wronged, had a quarrel with their parents, or failed in an exam. The psychological volunteers in the background will not preach "You need to understand your parents" or "Study hard" right away. Sometimes they will even complain along with "My mother is like this too, it's really annoying." On the contrary, the children are more willing to listen to the suggestions later. Now, the monthly activity rate of their version of the mini program can reach 78%, which is more than three times that before the revision.

In fact, in the final analysis, whether this small program is good or not does not depend on how complete the functions are or how advanced the technology is, but whether the people who create it really squat down and treat teenagers as equal users instead of objects that need to be disciplined. After all, only health tools that children are willing to open and believe can really help them.