The Live Beyond campaign, initiated by the California Health and Human Services Agency and Office of the California Surgeon General, aims to address Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress. Recognizing the power of real voices, the campaign’s objective was to create authentic, relatable stories that would deeply engage diverse youth and young adults across California, showing them not only the impact of ACEs but, more importantly, the paths towards healing.
To achieve this, we collaborated with the UCLA-UCSF ACEs Aware Family Resilience Network (UCAAN), tapping into their youth leaders and advisory council—young people aged 16-25, all with lived experiences of ACEs. These individuals come from diverse backgrounds, including those impacted by foster care, incarceration, and immigration challenges. Our goal was to empower them to create user-generated content (UGC) that would speak to other young people recovering from childhood trauma, fostering a community of hope, resilience, and healing.
By using UGC, the campaign aimed to amplify the voices of youth with lived experiences, stories, and messages, allowing them to control their narratives and share their journeys to recovery. Their stories are featured across our campaign platforms, inspiring others to understand the shared experience and impacts of ACEs and toxic stress, and take the first steps towards their healing journey.
To actualize the Live Beyond campaign’s vision of engaging young people through relatable stories, we collaborated with UCAAN to co-create authentic user-generated content.
We identified the youth and young adult leaders group and the youth advisory council—comprising 21 individuals from all 10 regions of California—who represented disproportionately impacted communities. These young people had firsthand experience with ACEs and toxic stress, providing an essential lens for the campaign.
Our strategy centered on empowering these youth to shape the campaign’s direction and message. We began with a series of trust-building workshops, where we engaged them in the ideation process through listening sessions and feedback loops. This collaborative approach ensured that the campaign, its messaging, creative, and even color choices, reflected their real-life experiences and resonated with youth and young adult audiences.
After landing on a final concept that combined state testing with the council's input, we facilitated co-design workshops where the youth produced UGC for our campaign website, social channels, and more. These workshops offered a platform for the youth to create content based on prompts such as “How I heal,” “Messages of hope,” “Healing through culture,” and “Stopping the cycle.” This yielded videos, art submissions, and photographs that authentically captured their stories of hope, healing, and resilience.
Key to our execution was honoring their lived experiences. By allowing the youth to control their narratives, we ensured the content would be authentic and deeply personal. This content was not just about the challenges they faced but also focused on the positive actions they had taken to heal and grow. The raw, unpolished nature of the UGC lent itself to high engagement, as it felt real and relatable to peers.
The UGC was featured across the LiveBeyondCA.org site and social platforms, and seamlessly integrated into the broader campaign. Additionally, this content was amplified through earned media stories and shared widely by the youth themselves, further increasing reach and resonance. By giving these youth a platform, we empowered them to become advocates and ambassadors for healing and thriving beyond childhood trauma.
The Live Beyond campaign’s user-generated content strategy significantly contributed to the campaign’s success, driving engagement and fostering a sense of community among California’s youth.
By empowering youth with lived experience to create and share their own stories, the campaign exceeded its engagement goals and helped normalize conversations about ACEs and healing across California and beyond.The UGC was instrumental in not only spreading awareness but also inspiring action among peers, cementing the success of the Live Beyond campaign.
The Live Beyond campaign’s user-generated content strategy significantly contributed to the campaign’s success, driving engagement and fostering a sense of community among California’s youth.
