Case Study: Selfsea
Peer Health Exchange was founded by young people, for young people. In 1999, six Yale undergraduates began teaching health workshops in New Haven public schools in order to fill the gap left by an underfunded, understaffed district health program.
In 2003, the founding members of the group established Peer Health Exchange to replicate this successful program in other communities with unmet health education needs. Since 2003, PHE has trained over 15,000 college students to deliver health education to over 188,000 high school-aged young people in major cities across the country
In order to support the evolving needs of these young people, PHE partnered with Sidebench to build selfsea, a digital community created inclusively with and for young people as a safe space to discuss and share knowledge on identity, mental and sexual health.
Strategic goals
PHE wanted to build a mobile app to provide young people with support, resources, and stories from other young adults (near peers).
Prior to engaging Sidebench, PHE had launched an early proof-of-concept web app, but needed something more usable for selfsea’s target users that could scale.
With that in mind, Sidebench was tasked with building and releasing a mobile app for iOS and Android while maintaining the previously built web component as well.
Solution
Understanding PHE’s target users to inform product strategy was a big priority from day 1. The selfsea mobile app features a ‘communities’ feature where verified users post questions on moderated discussion boards. App use is completely confidential -- while users have to enter an email address in order to access it, that information isn't seen by anyone. Users can choose to share some profile information with other users, keep it private, or remain anonymous depending on their comfort level. selfsea is built with modules that provide young people with support, resources, and stories from others who've experienced issues surrounding mental health and sexual identity.
selfsea is now live as an app available to young folks, with more features on the way. Sidebench is proud to partner with impactful organizations like Peer Health Exchange to deliver meaningful tools that emphasize community, identity, and health.
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