Dr. Ashurst became the national co-chair in Fall 2018 for the Youth Experiencing Homelessness National Subcommittee, one of the 7 subcommittees of the  "Access, Equity and Belonging Committee" (AEBC), a national priority through USDA, National 4-H, and Extension Committee on Policy.

Ashurst co-chairs the multi-state subcommittee, currently including Extension personnel from 11 states that are conducting programming for youth who are experiencing or at high risk for experiencing homelessness. The subcommittee has monthly virtual meetings to plan out multi-state efforts, share ideas, and provide support to one another. During the reporting year, the multi-state subcommittee submitted joint proposals for 3 national conferences and trainings. All were accepted. During these workshops/panels, they spoke about their programming and about how to effectively reach out to homeless and unstably housed youth through Extension programming. A journal article was authored by members of the subcommittee and was accepted to the Journal of Youth Development (Forstadt, L., Yuan, S., Ashurst, K., Scheer, M., Myers, S., & Wallace, H. (in press). Programming ideas for youth experiencing homelessness. Journal of Youth Development. The subcommittee has completed and regularly updates a working national logic model, a list of national organizations and web sites, list of national funding opportunities, and more to make publicly available for Extension staff to better able to reach out to and engage homeless and unstably housed youth. A national fact sheet on homeless youth was developed in June 2020 and will be published in the next reporting year.