Can a Mentor Fix a Teen’s Health Habits? New Study Says Maybe
Arlinghaus, K. R., Stuenkel, K., Gadient, J., Bell, A. N., Goodman, L. P., Sherwood, N. E., & McMorris, B. J. (2026). “DiscoverU”: Formative development and mixed-methods evaluation of an afterschool health and well-being mentoring program for adolescents. Journal of Community Psychology, 54, e70137. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.70137
Introduction
Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools faced two intertwined crises: rising adolescent depression and anxiety alongside declining physical activity and increased cardiovascular risk. Most interventions treat these problems separately. A University of Minnesota research team, partnering with Columbia Heights Public Schools near Minneapolis, tested a different approach: “DiscoverU,” an afterschool program built around cross-age group mentoring, pairing college-age mentors with middle and high schoolers rather than teaching at them directly. The program integrated three components rarely combined: mindful eating (focused on internal hunger cues rather than calorie counting), structured physical activity, and social-emotional learning drawn from the Lions Quest curriculum. Grounded in Bandura’s social cognitive theory, the design assumed that changing a teenager’s environment, skills, and confidence together would produce more lasting change than any single intervention alone. The name came from a student who suggested it at a school wellness meeting, capturing both the goal of self-discovery and the university-school partnership behind it.
Methods
The authors combined surveys from 32 adolescents with focus groups involving 14 students, 14 mentors, three facilitators, and three school staff members. Participants were mostly female (78%) and high schoolers (66%), reflecting the district’s racial and economic diversity; 88% qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, and roughly a quarter screened positive for depression or anxiety. Separate focus groups with adolescents, mentors, facilitators, and staff, plus open-ended surveys and journals, were coded by three analysts using both preset categories and themes that emerged from the data. Because this was an early pilot, researchers used a significance threshold of p < 0.10 to detect preliminary signals rather than prove generalizable effectiveness. Researchers measured physical activity, mindful eating habits, and social skills before and after two eight-week program cycles (Fall 2022 and Winter 2023), using paired statistical tests alongside thematic analysis of interviews and journals.
Results
Physical activity rose from roughly three to four days per week (p < 0.01), closely tracking how often students actually attended. Cooperative behavior also improved significantly (p = 0.05), which researchers linked to the program’s team-based games. Other measures—self-efficacy, self-determination, mindless eating—moved in positive directions without reaching significance, likely reflecting inconsistent attendance limiting exposure to the curriculum.
100% of students said they would recommend DiscoverU to a friend, and 77%–85% reported feeling comfortable, accepted, and engaged. Students consistently described mentors as older siblings or confidants. Attendance remained the clear weak point. Despite the redesign, only 44%–52% of students attended at least seven of eight weeks. Focus groups revealed this wasn’t disinterest but exhaustion, babysitting duties, and homework. Consistency did improve slightly between cycles—students attending just one or two weeks fell from 16% to zero.
Discussion
The mentoring relationship itself, more than curriculum content, made integrated health promotion appealing to teenagers who might otherwise reject it. Students consistently credited mentors with motivating their participation, echoing prior research on why young adult mentors carry credibility teenagers grant to peers but not always to adults. The physical activity gains appear largely tied to program days themselves, a pattern seen in other afterschool interventions that struggle to shift behavior outside structured time. Whether DiscoverU’s benefits generalize to daily life remains unresolved. The persistent attendance gap suggests that the students who might benefit most from social-emotional support are often the ones with least capacity to seek it after an exhausting school day.
Implications for Mentoring Programs
This study offers a strong prototype for integrating physical activity, nutrition, and social-emotional learning through mentoring, with acceptability findings about as positive as this research can produce. But the attendance data caution against assuming satisfaction guarantees participation. Similar programs should build in flexibility for inconsistent attendance, consider conflicts with students’ home responsibilities, and lean on the mentoring relationship—not curriculum content—as the primary driver of both recruitment and retention. The university partnership that made DiscoverU possible may also be difficult to replicate without similar access to nearby higher-education resources.
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