Reach for Health Community Youth Service (RFH-CYS) is a school-based, service learning intervention that combines community field placements with classroom health instruction. It is designed to help middle school students develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that will keep them safe and healthy. RFH-CYS is implemented across 30 school weeks, and students spend about 3 hours per week in community youth service and in the classroom. Through field placements in health and social service settings, students have the opportunity to experience the sense of empowerment and accomplishment that comes from being asked to do something meaningful, and doing it well. Weekly RFH classroom lessons reinforce teens' community service experiences and provide information and skills on reducing risks related to early sexual initiation as well as other health-compromising behaviors. An experimental evaluation of RFH-CYS conducted in a large public middle school in Brooklyn, New York, found that program participants were significantly less likely to report sexual initiation or recent intercourse, recent sex without a condom or other birth control at initial and 2-year follow-up than those who received only the RFH classroom component.