We help girls build emotional resilience, healthcare confidence, and self-advocacy — before challenges become lifelong conditions.
Emotional literacytaught early
Prevention firstnot reaction
Why this matters now
Most systems wait until girls are already in crisis.
Across the United States, girls are experiencing unprecedented levels of distress. Yet our systems are built to step in only once problems have already escalated — instead of preventing them from taking root in the first place.
Schools lack emotional education
Comprehensive emotional literacy is rarely taught, leaving girls without the language for what they feel.
Families feel unprepared
Parents report feeling unequipped to navigate the emotional realities of adolescence with their daughters.
Healthcare treats, not prevents
Systems emphasize treatment over prevention, and girls get limited guidance on understanding their own bodies.
Rather than focusing solely on mental illness, we cultivate emotional health, self-trust, healthcare confidence, and resilience.
The Institute for Healthy Girlhood is a prevention-first initiative working to change the trajectory of women's health — through education, research, and community partnership. We're starting in Los Angeles County, with a model built to travel.
Every girl deserves the knowledge, skills, relationships, and confidence to become the healthiest advocate for her own well-being.
What we do
Three programs, one foundation
Each program meets girls, families, and systems where they are — building health from the ground up.
The Healthy Girlhood Listening Project
Your girlhood story matters. We're listening.
We're gathering the real experiences of women to shape prevention that reflects girls' actual lives. If you're a woman, we'd be honored to hear your story — it takes just a few minutes, it's confidential, and it helps build something better for the next generation.
We focus on the factors that can be influenced — so girls grow into the healthiest advocates for their own well-being.
Our mission
Chronic illness and mental health conditions have many causes. We focus on the ones that can be influenced.
Emotional literacy, supportive relationships, early intervention, healthy coping skills, and access to care are the factors we can actually shape — and the ones that strengthen women's health at every stage of life.
The Institute for Healthy Girlhood works to prevent long-term mental and physical health challenges by giving girls emotional resilience, healthy relationships, and self-advocacy skills during critical developmental years.
Through education, research, community partnerships, and policy advocacy, we promote early prevention and healthy emotional development as the foundation for enduring health and well-being.
The pillars we build on
Five factors we can influence
01
Emotional literacy
Naming and understanding feelings as signals, not flaws.
02
Supportive relationships
Trusted bonds that hold girls steady through change.
03
Early intervention
Acting before challenges become lifelong conditions.
04
Healthy coping
Skills for stress, rest, and boundaries that protect health.
05
Access to care
Confidence to seek, understand, and advocate within healthcare.
Build it with us
Join the founding circle
The Institute for Healthy Girlhood is just beginning — and we're looking for the people who want to help build it from the ground up.
We're seeking founding advisory board members and collaborators who believe girls deserve prevention, not just treatment:
EducatorsResearchersClinicians & therapistsMedical professionalsNonprofit & program leadersGrant & fundraising prosCommunity advocatesPeople with lived experience
Our people
Meet the leadership.
Meet the people building the Institute for Healthy Girlhood — clinicians, researchers, and advocates united by a belief that girls deserve prevention and support long before they're in crisis.
Founder
Noa Gasway
Founder & Executive Director
Noa is the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Healthy Girlhood. She holds a B.A. in Psychological Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, completed in two years, and a M.S. in Counseling Psychology (Marriage & Family Therapy) from California Lutheran University. Noa currently works as a Therapist I in Child & Family Services at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, where she previously served as a Crisis Counselor on the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and as a member of the Next Gen Advisory Council. She also previously worked as a Residential Counselor supporting teenagers with co-occurring substance use and mental health needs, and currently works part-time as a respite caregiver. Drawing on her own lived experience, she founded the Institute for Healthy Girlhood to bring a prevention-first approach to girls' emotional and physical health — believing that the earlier girls have access to the language, tools, and support to understand themselves, the more equipped they are to advocate for their own well-being throughout their lives.
Founding Advisory Board
Sarah Blake
Sarah has more than a decade of experience working at the intersection of evidence and programming with and for adolescents. As a sociologist and public health researcher, she specializes in health education, gender, and empowerment across diverse global contexts, including West Africa and the U.S.
Ilana Cohen
Ilana is a Master of Social Work student at the University of Pennsylvania with a passion for mental health, writing, and dance. Originally from Southern California, she earned a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Human Rights from Barnard College. She enjoys memoirs, Broadway shows, and exploring new creative projects and crafts.
Sara Dorman
Sara recently graduated from Cal Lutheran University with her Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy and is currently working toward licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist. With a background in psychology, sociology, and child and adolescent development, she is especially passionate about understanding the many relationships, experiences, and social systems that shape girls as they grow, and helping young people feel seen, supported, and confident in who they are. As a therapist and mom, Sara brings both a clinical and deeply personal appreciation for the importance of creating spaces where girls feel safe to be curious, find their voice, and become who they are.
Alyssa Freeman
Alyssa is a mother of two, including a preteen daughter. She has been on her own mental health journey for the past two years and believes that every girl deserves a strong foundation of knowledge, support, and empowerment when it comes to her mental health.
Bethany Gould
Bethany is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Speech, Language, and Learning at Northwestern University. Originally from Los Angeles, California, she earned her undergraduate degree from Indiana University. Drawing from both her personal and professional experiences, she is passionate about educating and empowering young women and is excited to contribute to this work.
Dounia Guermas
Research Lead, Program Evaluation
Dounia is a psychological researcher whose work examines how relationships, culture, and social environments shape emotional wellbeing. She has assisted with research across multiple University of California labs, studying affect, close relationships, and psychological resilience through both qualitative and quantitative methods. She holds a B.A. in Psychological Science and Criminology, Law, and Society from UC Irvine with a minor in Civic and Community Engagement (Magna Cum Laude). Her experience spans youth programming, community-based research, and curriculum development, including designing and leading an evidence-based curriculum for at-risk youth in Orange County. As a trilingual Algerian-American, she brings particular attention to how culture, language, and community shape the ways girls experience wellbeing and seek support. As Founding Research Lead for Program Evaluation, she helps guide the organization's evaluation strategy to ensure its programming remains grounded in evidence and responsive to girls' lived experiences.
Laurelle Kaiser
Laurelle is a UCSB alumna and clinical research professional passionate about mental health, research, and supporting the well-being of girls and young women. Through her experiences in research, mental health advocacy, and working with young adults and children, she is committed to creating spaces where girls feel heard, educated, supported, and empowered. In her free time, she enjoys reading murder mystery novels, watching sunsets over the beach, spending time in the ocean, and pretending to host her own podcast.
Rachel Levin
Rachel is a Marriage and Family Therapy master's graduate whose passion for supporting girls and young women is deeply rooted in both her professional and lived experiences. As a neurodivergent and queer person living with chronic illness, she understands the importance of having spaces where people can feel seen, accepted, and supported in the fullness of who they are. She is excited to contribute her knowledge and lived experience to help girls develop emotional resilience, build healthy relationships, and learn to confidently advocate for themselves.
Taylor Line
Taylor has completed a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology and is currently pursuing a second Master's degree in Health Education and Behavior. With experience in telehealth crisis intervention, leadership, research, and teaching in higher education, she has dedicated years of her career to advocating for increased accessibility to higher education and individualized mental health services. In preparation for a long-term career in chemical dependency counseling and research, she is involved in projects focused on ADHD, harm reduction strategies, and substance use initiation influences among adult populations.
Patricia Magnaye
Patricia recently earned a Master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. During her graduate training, she completed her practicum at the Ventura County Behavioral Health Adult Clinic, gaining experience supporting individuals through a variety of mental health concerns. She currently works as an Associate MFT Clinician with the Simi Valley Unified School District, providing therapeutic and social-emotional support to students.
Vanessa Porea
Vanessa is a licensed therapist, public speaker, trainer, and consultant in the mental health field. She is specialized in working with severe mental illness and co-occurring disorders, along with a focus on working with adolescents and young adults. Vanessa has worked in both private and public mental health care settings, and is currently focused on working in community mental health in Los Angeles and across the state of California. Along with her work in the field, Vanessa also serves on Advisory Boards for Don't MiND Me and Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services.
Chloe Schlachter
Chloe is passionate about helping young women, especially teen girls, build the confidence and resilience to become strong, healthy women, an inspiration she draws from the women in her own life. She is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist who earned her Master's in Counseling Psychology from California Lutheran University and her Bachelor's degree from Pepperdine University. Over the past year, she has deepened this work through her clinical internship, partnering with community organizations and a nonprofit mental health site to support teen girls directly.
Athena Simpson
Athena brings 30 years of parenting experience and over a decade of college instruction to her work as a certified parent coach, where these two passions come together. Outside of coaching, she can be found surrounded by nature, listening to live music, or enjoying art in one of its many forms.
Marie Stoner
Marie is an epidemiologist and adolescent health researcher. Her work examines how social and structural conditions shape the health and well-being of adolescents and young adults, with a focus on sexual and reproductive health, mental health, and violence prevention. She has expertise in program evaluation and uses quantitative, qualitative, and participatory research methods to inform programs that respond to young people's priorities and lived experiences.
Sadie Williams
Sadie holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Southern California and currently works as a Registered Behavior Technician at Easterseals Northern California, delivering individualized behavioral interventions to young clients with autism. She also works as a 988 Crisis Counselor at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, supporting callers in crisis with real-time emotional support and connection to community resources. Sadie is passionate about helping young people build emotional resilience early and cultivating psychological health — values that shape her work at the Institute for Healthy Girlhood.
Our vision
Imagine every girl entering high school already equipped.
When girls learn these skills early, we prevent lifelong health challenges — and build stronger communities.
Imagine if every girl could…
Enter high school knowing how to:
Identify chronic stress before it takes hold
Recognize anxiety before it becomes debilitating
Trust her own body and what it tells her
Advocate for herself in healthcare settings
Understand that rest is productive
Set boundaries that protect her health
See her emotions as biological signals rather than character flaws
Ask for help without shame or fear
Our approach
We treat a girl's health as one connected whole.
Emotional health, physical health, relationships, and self-advocacy shape one another throughout life — so we bring them together, by design, across every part of a girl's world.
Developmental psychology
How girls grow, feel, and form identity.
Prevention science
Acting early, before problems compound.
Public health
Population-level, systems-minded change.
Education
Meeting girls where they already are.
Women's health
Bodies understood, not just treated.
Healthcare advocacy
Confidence to navigate and self-advocate.
Grounded in the science
Evidence-informed from the ground up
Our curriculum is built on established frameworks in psychology, education, and public health — not invented in a vacuum.
Social-Emotional Learning (CASEL)
The five SEL competencies schools and youth programs already recognize — the backbone of our framework.
Prevention Science
We practice universal prevention — reaching all girls with skills before challenges emerge, not after.
Trauma-Informed Care
SAMHSA's principles of safety, trust, and empowerment shape how every session is delivered.
CBT & DBT Skills
Evidence-based emotion-regulation and interpersonal skills, adapted for a universal, non-clinical setting.
Ecological Systems Theory
Bronfenbrenner's insight that a girl's health is shaped at every level — self, family, school, community, and systems.
Resilience & Self-Determination
Building autonomy, competence, connection, and the protective factors that help girls thrive.
Our programs are informed by these frameworks and continuously refined through the Institute's own research and the voices of the girls and women we serve.
Our five strategic pillars
Five strategic pillars, one healthy girlhood.
A connected model that builds prevention into every part of a girl's world — her classroom, her healthcare, her family, her community, and the systems that shape them all.
The Healthy Girlhood Framework
Five developmental competencies
Every pillar builds toward the same five capacities every girl deserves.
1
Know Yourself
Emotional literacy
2
Trust Yourself
Self-advocacy & identity
3
Care for Yourself
Physical & emotional health
4
Connect with Others
Relationships & community
5
Change the System
Research, leadership & advocacy
What we do
Our five strategic pillars
Tap any pillar to explore its curriculum and initiatives.
Early Voice is the Institute's flagship prevention initiative. Designed for girls ages 8–18 and adapted across four developmental age bands (8–10, 10–12, 12–14, 15–18), it delivers evidence-informed education during the developmental years when internalizing disorders such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and chronic perfectionism most commonly begin to emerge. Rather than waiting until girls are in crisis, Early Voice teaches the emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal skills that help them recognize distress early, regulate emotions, seek support, and advocate for themselves. The curriculum integrates developmental psychology, prevention science, and public health to address both individual skills and the social pressures that shape girls' emotional health.
Body Listens bridges the gap between emotional health and physical health. Girls are often taught about puberty but receive little education about chronic stress, nervous system regulation, healthcare navigation, or how to advocate for themselves when something feels wrong. Body Listens helps girls develop health literacy while emphasizing that mental and physical health are deeply interconnected.
The program does not suggest that stress causes autoimmune disease or other chronic illnesses. Instead, it helps girls understand that emotional health is one component of overall well-being, and encourages early recognition, healthy habits, and appropriate medical care.
Understanding your bodyWhole-person healthHealthcare confidenceLiving well with chronic illnessBeing a supportive peer
Healthy development does not happen in isolation. Healthy Girlhood Community creates supportive environments where girls, families, and mentors can learn, heal, and grow together. This pillar recognizes that resilience is strengthened through healthy relationships, trusted adults, and connected communities.
The Eldest Daughter Project (in development)Future Her Mentorship (in development)Parent AcademyCommunity programs
Parent Academy gives parents and caregivers the same emotional-health skills we teach girls, so the confidence, boundaries, and self-trust a girl is building are reinforced at home. Launching 2026.
Schools are uniquely positioned to influence lifelong health. Our long-term goal is to partner with educators and administrators to build emotional development into school culture — so prevention becomes part of everyday education rather than an emergency response.
A goal we're building toward. Healthy Girlhood Schools describes where we aim to go — a future initiative, not yet in practice.
The Institute's research and policy division exists to expand understanding of the factors that shape girls' lifelong health and to translate that knowledge into meaningful systems change. Working alongside universities, healthcare systems, educators, and policymakers, the Institute will evaluate programs, publish original research, and advocate for evidence-informed public policy.
Parent Academy · Launching 2026
Raising emotionally healthy girls — together.
Workshops that give parents and caregivers the same skills we teach girls, so growth continues at home.
What it is
The most powerful classroom in a girl's life is her home.
Parent Academy equips the adults around a girl with the language and tools of emotional health — so the confidence, boundaries, and self-trust she's building are reinforced at the kitchen table, not just in the program room.
Workshops are warm, practical, and judgment-free — designed to gently replace perfectionism and shame-based patterns with connection and understanding.
What you'll explore
Practical tools for real parenting moments
Fostering emotional literacy at home
Supporting a daughter through anxiety & perfectionism
Encouraging healthy independence & confidence
Communication, boundaries & repair after conflict
Understanding the eldest daughter dynamic & family roles
Navigating social media, comparison & body image
Modeling rest, self-trust & resilience
Recognizing when to seek extra support
Formats
Flexible to fit your family or organization
Workshop series or single sessions
A one-time talk or an ongoing series — whatever fits your community's rhythm.
Virtual or in-person
Join from anywhere, or bring us into your space — whichever reaches parents best.
Through your school or organization
Offer Parent Academy as part of your existing family-engagement programming.
Whether you're a parent, a school, or an organization, we'd love to help you bring Parent Academy to the families you serve.
We envision a future where emotional education is recognized as an essential part of public health, and where every child is equipped to become a lifelong advocate for their own well-being — supported by systems designed to nurture health before suffering becomes chronic.
We're starting with girls, where the need is urgent and personal to our founder — but emotional regulation, healthy boundaries, and resilience are skills every child deserves. Over time, we aim to extend this same foundation to all young people through future Healthy Childhood and Healthy Boyhood initiatives.
Want to bring a program to your community?
We partner with schools, clinics, and families. Reach out and let's explore what's possible together.
Contact us
Let's work together.
Explore how we can advance the health and well-being of girls through our comprehensive preventive initiative.
Send us a message
We'd love to hear from you — partners, parents, and curious minds alike.
A ready-to-run curriculum grounded in social-emotional learning and prevention science — no need to build it yourself.
Fills your well-being mandate
Meet the growing expectation for mental-health and SEL programming without adding clinical staff.
We bring the facilitator
A certified facilitator delivers your first cohorts, so you see the program in action from day one. Over time, we train your own staff to carry it forward.
Designed for girls 8–18
Every curriculum is adapted across four developmental age bands — 8–10, 10–12, 12–14 and 15–18 — so it fits the girls you actually serve.
Prevention, not therapy
Clear boundaries: education and skill-building, with pathways to care when a girl needs more support.
Measurable outcomes
Evaluation tools that give you results to share with your board, your community, and your funders.
How it works
From first call to lasting impact
1
Discovery call
We learn your community, your girls, and your goals — and whether we're a good fit.
2
Choose your program & format
Early Voice, Body Listens, or a blend — with session length and cadence shaped to your schedule.
3
We deliver
Our trained staff facilitate your first cohorts, so you see the program in action from day one.
4
Train-the-trainer
We equip your own facilitators to sustain and expand the program within your organization.
5
Measure & grow
Evaluation, feedback, and reporting you can share with your board and funders.
Prevention, not therapy. Our programs are educational and skill-building — not clinical treatment. Facilitators are trained to recognize when a girl needs more support and to connect her to appropriate care.
Free to partner, built to last.
Our programming is free — to partner organizations, to families, and to every girl who walks in. No cost, no means testing, no fees for materials. Let's explore a pilot for your girls.
Give it a spin. Wherever it lands is today's reflection — a gentle way to build the emotional-literacy habit we teach girls, one question at a time.
Today's reflection
Spin again anytime — a fresh reflection each time.
Facilitators & parents: this makes a lovely warm-up to open an Early Voice session, or a conversation starter at the dinner table.
A taste of Early Voice
What is this feeling telling me?
Feelings aren't problems to fix — they're information to understand. Pick what you're feeling and see what it might be pointing to.
I'm feeling…
What it might be telling you
A question to sit with
Other words for this feeling
If a feeling is too big to hold right now
You don't have to be in a crisis to reach out, and you don't have to explain yourself first. These are free, confidential, and answer calls, texts, and chats from teens directly, any time of day or night.
Dr. Becky Kennedy's guide to becoming the parent you want to be.
Inventing Ourselves
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's book on the secret life of the teenage brain.
Additional recommended titles on trauma, attachment, and eating-disorder recovery from the original resource packet are available on request — reach out to us.
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