How was your Convention Social Media Experience?

Let us know how we did with social media at the 2011 Convention! If you attended in Chicago, take this 5 minute survey: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22CP2NEXQRR/

If you didn't attend in person, please complete this survey: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22CP2PBXRBF/

Convention Update from Linda Lam

How do we create a work environment that helps new staff at SBHC swim and not sink? Does this sound familiar to you and your organization - new staff orientation consist of attending a full day of lecture after lecture or given a 4 inch binder to read? Attending the “Creating a SBHC Welcome Wagon: Integrating New Staff into School Health” at the NASBHC convention was an interactive session that helped participants like me continue to build a better orientation and on-boarding for new staff. We know how important the work we do at SBHCs are and we need more people to join this movement and stay in it.

As the workshop presenters discussed, we are so eager and in need of the new staff to start in the health center right away that sometimes we breeze through the orientation and training. It’s challenging for new staff since they have to learn about the workings of the sponsoring organization and the school system! The presenters guided participants through activities where we discussed our own goals and objectives for SBHC orientation, breaking down acronyms, creating a School Checklist tour where either new staff can do as a scavenger hunt, guided by another staff or on their own, and evaluation with the new staff to see what else she/he felt was missing. The presenters also discussed incorporating Adult Learning Theory and avoiding the “banking” method of just giving information as Paolo Friere discussed. Other ways to support new staff was providing her/him with a buddy who could show them the ropes in the day to day work and/or a mentor who can show her/him how the organization work upwards.

I hope you get to check out the powerpoint that will be posted on NASBHC’s website! I know I will be definitely be adding some of the aspects discussed to Asian Pacific Health Care Venture’s SBHC orientation!

Linda Lam

Convention Update from Parrish Ravelli

#Me

One of the things that I have been thinking about at NASBHC is in how our social networks are shifting to be more technological. How these networks are moving online and away from personal interaction. And while we boast our limitless connection to the world around us, we struggle to connect simple resources where they are needed the most. And hashtags, what's up with hashtags?

This symbol that once was the lonely button on the bottom right hand corner of your touch dial phone has lept into stardom and now is the corner stone of wit, underlining sentences, comments, status updates with a subtle piece of whit that gets at the reality of what you really want to say. #lookatmenow!

I wonder, if we all were required to label ourselves, our groups, our crew with hashtags, what would they say. I might want to simply brand what we represent #schoolbasedhealthcenters or the national group that connects us all #nasbhc. But really, there is so much more that I have seen here in Chicago. I hear people talking about "battle scars" taken from fighting for minor consent laws and smiling at all that the past years have brought in healthcare reform. When I see leaders in the health community finding common ground with the education community and, more than that, understanding that silos cannot exist if we are to succeed. I have felt the energy from youth coming together from all over the country to say #wedeserveaccesstocare.

The truth, I think, is that while our networks are continuing to be facilitated online, they are not defined by this. Our social networks are inclusive of anyone who is willing to challenge systems that create health care disparities. So to that I say:

#strengthinnumbers

Parrish Ravelli

Convention Update from Lauren Mosely

Today was a true eye-opener! I was introduced to an agency that has inspired me to reach out to the youth of my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama. Youth Empowered Solutions (YES!) is a nonprofit organization that empowers youth, in partnership with adults, to create community change. They equip high school aged youth and their adult allies with the tools necessary to take a stand in their communities and create change that will positively impact adolescent health.

This energetic and inspiring session celebrated the fact that children really are our future, and they can be the best advocates for school-based health centers! In an interactive presentation, with the youth and program director of YES!, we uncovered the importance of giving youth a deeper level of understanding about current important issues that impact our society like access to health care. Are we giving them the skills and resources to get involved? Do they have a platform to do so? Youth Empowered Solutions (YES!) is not just a philosophy – it’s a movement, and they are working with youth who are ready to learn and take proactive steps in their community to make a difference.

I am motivated now more than ever to involve the youth of Huntsville/Madison County to become advocates for school-based health centers like our very own -- HEALS, Inc.!

Lauren Mosely

NASBHC's Youth Track Visits Uplift Community High School

The Youth Track at this year's Convention toured the school-based health center at Uplift Community High School to learn about the services offered to students of Uplift and the community. Check out these photos from their visit:

Workshop: B6 - Collaborative Management of Concussions in Adolescent Athletes in a Maine SBHC

This workshop will be held on Monday, June 27th from 1:30pm to 2:45pm in Ballroom F/G.

In my session titled “Collaborative Management of Concussions in Adolescent Athletes in a Maine SBHC” I will share how our program has evolved. Concussion management is getting a lot of “press” but is still a very contentious issue with some coaches, parents, and athletes. I have attended two conferences where national leaders have presented the latest research on concussion management and current studies on the effects of repetitive concussions and the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) which I will share in this presentation. The data is quite overwhelming regarding long term prognosis. When dealing with athletes who are not going to make a living playing professional sports, it is challenging to get the athlete and the parent to understand the risk of multiple concussions. Our program is very fortunate that we had an athletic trainer who is very knowledgeable about concussion management who paved the way by introducing the use of HeadMinder several years ago and doing yearly baseline studies on the athletes. We have a school nurse who is very involved; we co-manage the athletes. Our Athletic Director is very supportive as well. The key to our collaboration is communication and I will share how we accomplish this as well as our challenges. Over the past year we have continued to “tweak” our program according to the current recommended guidelines and research. As the nurse practitioner for our SBHC, I do a lot of sports medicine. Concussion is an area that I am passionate about and I am anxious to share our program and current knowledge with other SBHC’s.

See you in Chicago!

Debra Nichols, RN, BSN, MN
Oxford Hills School-Based Health Center

Workshop: F5 - Does Your School Board Need a Sex-Ed Revolution? Does Your School Board Need a Sex-Ed Revolution?

This workshop will take place on Tuesday, June 28th from 3:15pm to 4:30pm in Ballroom B.

Do you want to change your sex education school board policy?

Do you wonder if others have been successful in changing policy in communities that don’t address adolescent sexuality in schools? It can be done! Come learn our approach and leave with tools to make your campaign a reality. We may be focusing on sexual health education, but you can apply these techniques for any type of campaign!
We will share success stories and provide details of our approaches to get young people engaged at high levels of systems change. You will hear our lessons learned, so you don’t make similar mistakes in your campaign work. This is a brief examination of how organizations can collaboratively engage youth and adult partners to change local school board policy. Participants will be able to identify their stage within the phased in model developed by Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health.
You will go through a short examination of where your organization can align with other established schools and community partners to do similar work within your own areas and identify your status within ICAH’s phased in model for school board policy change.

You will see that some of the principals are similar within rural, suburban, and urban school communities.

Then learn the steps needed to turn your policy into action by learning about the Implementation process and steps to consider for monitoring to ensure a sustainable program is meeting the changed policy!

Take a few minutes to watch our video!

NASBHC would like to Thank...

Thank You to this year’s Sponsors and Exhibitors

We want to express our sincere gratitude to NASBHC’s 2011 Annual Convention sponsors: JP Morgan Chase, the California Endowment, the Polk Bros Foundation, and CVS Caremark Workforce Initiatives, who is sponsoring live streaming and social media at the Convention.

We’d also like to thank this year’s exhibitors. Be sure to stop by their booths and talk to their representatives – they’ll be presenting a wealth of information.

2011 Convention Exhibitors include:

Alliance Practice and Data Management
American Academy of Pediatrics
Armor Mobile Systems
ASCD Healthy School Communities
Asceptico
ASU College of Nursing and Health Innovation
Coalition for Community Schools
Crosstex International
DNTLworks Equipment Corporation
GlaxoSmithKline, Inc.
Global Media Group
Henry Schein, Inc.
MacGill Discount Medical and School Nurse Supplies
Merck & Co., Inc.
Moore Medical
National Assembly on School-Based Health Care (NASBHC)
National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners
National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center
Novartis Vaccines
Sanofi Pasteur
School Health Corporation
School Nurse Supply
Smile Programs . . . the mobile dentists
Welch Allyn Inc.

Workshop: E4 - Medical Assistants: The Different Hats They Wear and How They Can Impact Efficiency

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 11:15am to 12:30pm in Houston/Kansas.

Would you like to explore various models of health care delivery for your School-based clinic? Would you like to view how productivity can increase by changing the model? Are your immunization rates not quite at the level you want them? Attend the session on Medical Assistants, the Different Hats They Wear to possibly answer some of these questions. An overview of the education, knowledge, and skills of a Medical Assistant will be discussed. The varying roles that a Medical Assistant can have in a school-based clinic will be presented along with the outcomes of this expanded role. Improvement in staff satisfaction for both the Medical Assistant and the care provider was noted. Active participation will be encouraged to facilitate networking and discovering how others have utilized the Medical Assistant in their SBHC.



Wanda Marshall, MS, CPNP
Program Manager, DSBHC

Workshop: E3 - Red Flags: An Adolescent Mental Health Awareness Program

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 11:15am to 12:30pm in Los Angeles/Miami.

Red Flags is a middle school based depression awareness and intervention program involving the entire school community. The program consists of three components, and is built around the short film “Thick ‘n Thin”. Red Flags is simple to implement, reduces stigma, improves school climate, low cost and proven effective at any level of implementation.

I am excited to be able to present this middle school program at the NASBHC Conference. My hope is to bring a sense of excitement about implementing this program not just in Ohio, but throughout the country. (Schools in several states - Florida, Michigan, and Oregon, to name a few - have already jumped on board utilizing this program.)

Everywhere I take Red Flags; it seems that everyone has a story. Many adults will often relay memories of loneliness, sadness, bullying and more, from their youth. Likewise, many students I’ve met seem to be waiting and wanting a listening ear to share their struggle with sometimes baffling emotions and circumstances and, perhaps, even feelings that there’s no way out. Musician and Entertainer, Lady Gaga, remains very open about the battle throughout her teenage years, having been consistently picked on about her looks. The message she tries to convey to all of her fans is one of overcoming: “We must be brave; follow our dreams.”

We’ve identified that there is a definite need for more awareness about adolescent depression and how to intervene. Now we have an easy solution – The Red Flags Program! The curriculums short film, “Thick ‘n Thin”, highlights a period in the life of Katie, a middle school student, who spirals downward into depression and begins thinking of suicide. Her friend, Jamal, relates the story of Katie’s struggle with depression. When he finally recognizes the symptoms of depression, and seeks help for her, he jeopardizes the bonds of their friendship. Confused, and sometimes offended by her behavior as she becomes more and more depressed, he nevertheless stands by her, eventually saving her life when she is contemplating suicide.

I believe that the greatest thing about this particular film is that every student will be able to identify with some part of it. It may cause them to consider a friend, a family member, or even themselves. This curriculum has been proven to help kids better understand what depression is and how it affects absolutely everyone around them.

Implementing Red Flags in your community is an opportunity that can be life changing for many kids. This program will raise awareness by demonstrating that there is somewhere to go; there is someone to turn to; there are answers; there is help.

Check out a small taste of our film!

Kristen Robinson, CHES
Associate Director/Program Coordinator
Mental Health America of Summit County

Workshop: E1 - Community Schools: A Strategy, Not a Program

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 11:15am to 12:30pm in Ballroom F.

Community Schools are a research-based and results-oriented strategy for organizing community resources around student success. School-based health centers are an integral part of many community schools; health professionals across the country have found these schools to be one of the most effective ways to provide preventive health care.



For many underserved children, school-based health centers are their first and only access to health care. This proactive approach prevents health issues from becoming acute concerns in the home, emergency room or community. As a result, youngsters miss fewer school days and parents miss fewer days at work.



In his study, Healthier Students Are Better Learners: A Missing Link in Efforts to Close the Achievement Gap, Charles Basch, Professor of Health Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, argues that ”Despite compelling evidence linking health and academic achievement, there is no U.S. Department of Education initiative to reduce educationally relevant health disparities as part of a national strategy to close the achievement gap.”

Thankfully this statement has the potential to be reversed. President Obama has praised the collaboration between the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services in trying to address this issue. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan publicly agree that collaboration is imperative and that schools are the natural vehicles for aligning resources to get American youth and children ready for productive, healthy and fulfilling lives.



Community schools have an important role to play that both Secretaries recognize: “Making every school a community school — that’s got to be our collective vision,” said Secretary Duncan at a CAS Practicum in 2009; Secretary Sebelius echoed Duncan, at the Coalition for Community Schools conference in April 2010, when she noted that “Community schools are the vehicle for building partnerships between education and health institutions that touch the lives of children and youth. I can’t think of a better way to deliver primary care and preventative care to students and their families than through school-based clinics."

On Tuesday June 28, Adria Cruz, School Health Services Manager at CAS, and I will be introducing the theory and practice of community schools as a strategy for organizing a community’s resources around student success – with a focus on the role of school-based health centers as an essential support.

Please visit: http://www.childrensaidsociety.org and http://nationalcenterforcommunityschools.childrensaidsociety.org/

Jane Quinn
Vice-President for Community Schools and Director National Center for Community Schools
The Children’s Aid Society (CAS)

Workshop: E2 - A Collaborative Approach to Sexually Transmitted Disease Detection in School-Based Settings

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 11:15am to 12:30pm in Ballroom G.

I will be presenting some interesting findings on a great collaboration project here in Illinois. The abstract is entitled, “A Collaborative Approach to Sexually Transmitted Disease Detection in School Based Settings.” It deals with increasing chlamydia screening at Illinois school-based health centers (SBHC). The Illinois Department of Public Health, STD Program, the Illinois Department of Human Services, School-Based/Linked Health Program and the Bureau of Community Nursing all wanted to work on this issue, so we set up a conference call with staff from 44 SBHCs and provided some background information and we discussed barriers to screening and ideas on how to increase screening. During the teleconference calls, the SBHC staff came up with some really creative ideas and strategies to increase screening such as advertising STI services around homecoming and prom to increase awareness and also working with gate keepers at the school such as coaches and counselors to advertise STI services at the school. I will be also sharing with you the outcome of this collaborative project, which turned out to be very productive.

Rich Zimmerman BS, MA
STD Counseling and Testing Coordinator
Illinois Department of Human Services

Workshop: D2 - Putting Bright Futures to Work: Measuring and Improving Preventive Services

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 8:00am to 10:45am in Ballroom B.

I'm excited to be presenting the workshop "Putting Bright Futures to Work: Measuring and Improving Preventive Services" on Tuesday, 6/28 from 8:00-10:45am. It will be a high energy presentation with plenty of time for interaction. Using the new Bright Futures guidelines has improved the way I do health supervision visits - I'm more confident that I have identified important risks. But what I like the most is identifying strengths in my patients - it has really changed the way I view my patients, and has added to my personal satisfaction with my day to day work! Learning how to make these changes in practice, and being able to measure what you have accomplished, is important for me and my patients. Come and learn how to make these changes in YOUR practice setting!

Barb Frankowski, MD
Professor of Pediatrics
University of Vermont

Workshop: D8 - Successful Models for Enrolling and Retaining Children in Medicaid and CHIP through School-Based Health Clinics Part III

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 8:00am to 10:45am in Ballroom A.

Over the past year and a half, the Colorado Association for School-Based Health Care (CASBHC) has heard many stories about the impact of outreach and enrollment (O&E) for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) at Colorado’s school-based health centers (SBHCs). All of these stories share a similar theme about the power of O&E in ensuring SBHC patients can access comprehensive care, including specialty care, when in need. One story has been on my mind lately. It is about a 6 year old girl who was uninsured when she visited her local SBHC. The on-site SBHC O&E staff person worked with the family to enroll her in Medicaid. During a SBHC visit, a heart murmur was detected. After referrals to a local pediatrician and a pediatric cardiologist, a heart defect requiring surgery was detected. Fortunately, due to her recent Medicaid coverage, the young girl is able to access all the care she needs, including the heart surgery. This SBHC played a critical role in this child’s life. Not only did the provider identify an important health finding, but through O&E they ensured access to comprehensive care within the clinic and beyond. The O&E work at Colorado’s SBHCs has changed many children and families lives. But we have also found that it is changing Colorado’s SBHCs. Through our federal Children Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) O&E grant, CASBHC has been able to increase the capacity for SBHCs to perform O&E on-site. During our grant period, we have seen many SBHCs grow the number of children covered by Medicaid and CHIP, in turn increasing their billable revenue. Ensuring SBHCs implement an effective outreach model is the key to success. During our CHIPRA grant, we have uncovered many lessons learned about effective and efficient O&E at SBHCs and are excited to share this information with SBHCs across the country.

Stacey Moody
Director of Member Services
Colorado Association for School-Based Health Care

Workshop: D8 - Successful Models for Enrolling and Retaining Children in Medicaid and CHIP through School-Based Health Clinics Part II

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 8:00am to 10:45am in Ballroom A.

Oregon Healthy Kids has conducted a successful campaign to enroll kids and teens in CHIP, Medicaid, and other state funded programs available for uninsured youth up to age 19. The campaign utilizes community partners to reach families and help them enroll as well as standard marketing techniques like print ads, radio, billboards, and social media. In March, we celebrated enrolling an additional 85,000 kids and teens since 2009. At the celebration, we heard one mom’s story that emphasized the difference health insurance can make to family.

A key component of the Healthy Kids outreach, enrollment, and retention campaign are the schools. Our school-based efforts have reached over 560,000 K-12 students in every school district across Oregon. We developed strategies that utilize events and systems already established in the schools, strengthen grassroots relationships between the schools and community partners, and consider the role of every professional and advocate in the school community.

Oregon Healthy Kids was also selected as a pilot state for CMS’s Get Covered. Get in the Game campaign. This opportunity included a visit from US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in August of last year. She was joined by Oregon’s then Governor Kulongoski at a high school in Portland to accept the challenge of helping to enroll 5 million children over the next 5 years into the children's Medicaid and CHIP programs.

Workshop: D8 - Successful Models for Enrolling and Retaining Children in Medicaid and CHIP through School-Based Health Clinics

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 8:00am to 10:45am in Ballroom A.

America’s students are best equipped to excel when they are healthy -- and staying healthy depends in large measure on whether they have health insurance that covers routine preventive care and medical attention when they are sick or injured. These days, many families are coping with the effects of the economic downturn, which may have meant the loss of a job and the health coverage that went with it. Fortunately, children without health insurance do not have to miss out – eligible children can sign-up for coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). School-based health clinics play a pivotal role in providing students needed health services and they are also natural partners in the national effort to enroll all eligible children in Medicaid and CHIP.

We know that outreach works – especially when it includes targeted efforts to help families enroll their children in Medicaid and CHIP and keep them covered for as long as they qualify. There are many ways that school-based health centers can take the lead by engaging other school staff – including teachers, athletic coaches, guidance counselors and others – and by creating opportunities for families to learn more about the programs and complete applications. Many states have on-line applications and have taken other steps to simplify and streamline the process, making it easier and more effective to incorporate such activities in schools. You can find general materials you can customize and a list of ten A-plus strategies for schools on the US Department of Health and Human Services website, www.insurekidsnow.gov.

On the website, you can also learn more about the Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge, issued by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Over 50 organizations have stepped up to the Challenge and are actively working to find and enroll all eligible children that are eligible for Medicaid and CHIP and we encourage you to join. Come to the session Successful Models for Enrolling and Retaining Children in Medicaid and CHIP through School-Based Health Clinics at 8:00am in Belmont and learn more about the Challenge and how school-based health centers in Oregon and Colorado are contributing to this important effort.

Amy Hennessy, MPH
Technical Director
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Consortium for Medicaid and Children’s Health Operations

Workshop: D4 - SBHC Integration: A Cross-Agency Quality Improvement Collaborative Model

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 8:00am to 10:45am in Belmont.

Learn how to better integrate your SBHC into the school community using a quality improvement process. Network with other conference participants while exploring new integration concepts, tools, and strategies developed by a collaborative of five Oakland, California SBHCs.



Samantha Blackburn, RN, MSN, PNP
Field and Technical Assistance Director
California School Health Centers Association

Workshop: D7 - North Carolina's Youth Advocacy Toolkit

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 8:00am to 10:45am in Ballroom H.

Friends, Advocates, Countrymen and women, lend me your ears! No seriously, check it out!

This year, the NC State Association teamed up with Youth Empowered Solutions (YES!) to collaborate on a really unique workshop aimed to help adult and youth leaders alike. It's no secret that engaging youth in school-based health care advocacy work is a major key to success for any local center or even state association, but what does it even mean to engage youth in this work we are so passionate about?



Our session is going to map out the Youth Empowerment Model (The Model) as an evidence-based methodology for engaging youth in creating community change around access to care issues. In North Carolina, the Model is being applied within both statewide and local communities...because let's be honest... you can't simply bring people to the table and expect miracles to happen. You have to create infrastructure, you have to provide a deeper understanding of the issues you are addressing and you have to rethink how you are defining success. Also, you have to have FUN! In Chicago, we are going to unveil our new YES! Youth Engagement Toolkit that is going to help you do just that (mostly have fun).



The adults will explore the value of The Model as, not just, a philosophy, but also an outcomes plan and an organizational infrastructure. Adults will leave with resources to help them facilitate an Access to Care training with TONS of fun and interactive games as well as an evaluation tool that adults can tailor and use to measure impact.

The youth will dig deep down into the field of school-based health care and explore "access to care" as a social justice issue to have a deeper comprehension of the issues they are advocating for as well as get some ideas for some new online and offline advocacy campaigns. All activities done will also be facilitated in a train-the trainer method so that youth participants will leave with the ability and know how to use them within their own community.

As well, we will talk briefly about a brand new organizational assessment tool called the YES! Appraisal. The Appraisal is a tool to help your organization understand its own capacity to engage in youth empowerment as well as create tangible and clear stepping stones for how to more deeply involve youth within the organizational structure.

Parrish Ravelli
Youth Empowerment Solutions (YES!)

***Following the session, the participants will receive an electronic version of the NC Youth Engagement Toolkit to begin using to create community change in their local community! Copies can be requested by emailing Parrish@youthempoweredsolutions.org***

Meet the Social Media Fellows: Kristin Anderson

I am looking forward to being in Chicago for the NASBHC conference next week. This is my third NASBHC convention and I always leave with new ideas and connections to strengthen our work in California. (Exploring Chicago won’t be too bad either! Be sure to check out Kyle’s blog post on what to see while in the city if you haven’t done so already.)

As the Associate Director of the California School Health Centers Association (CSHC) I am especially looking forward to connecting with the other State Affiliates to hear about their latest challenges and initiatives. I oversee fund development, communications, board engagement and operations for CSHC – and I am always interested in hearing how other organizations are tackling these critical areas.

I loved the social media coverage during last year’s conference in D.C. Seeing workshop highlights being tweeted directly from the sessions, knowing that colleagues were watching key speakers via the internet live streaming and being tagged in Facebook photos taken minutes earlier on the exhibit floor added energy to the event and broadened its reach beyond the hotel walls. I look forward to being a part of the social media team at this year’s conference. I am especially interested in sharing conference highlights with those who are unable to attend and reporting back to California school-health stakeholders about things of special interest to my fellow west-coasters. Watch for my tweets and Facebook posts throughout the event. Better yet, add your own comments to my entries to share your perspectives and highlights. (Visit the social media booth if you want to learn more about how to join in the fun.)

My dream is that someday school-based health centers will be a household concept. Parents will clamor for them right along with other critical school programs and services and students will get the much-needed services they too often have to do without. I have no doubt that expanding our presence through social media will move us closer to this goal. So, watch for my posts – and join in the dialogue. Together we can work toward a future where all children and youth are healthy and achieving at their full potential!

See you in Chicago.

Kristin Andersen
Associate Director
California School Health Centers Association

Workshop: A1 - The Big Tent: Local and State Experiences with Implementation of School Health Services

This workshop will be held on Monday, June 27th from 9:45am to 11:00am in Ballroom A.

Serena Clayton and I are asking everyone who really wants to be the “Big Tent” to attend our session, A1 - The Big Tent: Local and State Experiences with Implementation of School Health Services. Serena will be talking about what it looks like at a state level and I am going to bring it right down to where the rubber hits the road—the local level. We are going to have fun talking about what it takes to bring more and very different providers to school. In Baton Rouge, in addition to the eleven school-based health centers, I will be talking about everything else that is going on—coordinating the school nurse program which gives us the vision of 45,000 children on 90 different campuses, mobile dental providers seeing students on most of the fifty elementary school campuses, and optometrists who come to school to perform dilated eye exams and bring glasses to kids that need them! In addition to that (and because we work with so many students), I will be discussing the 15-18 MOUs that we have with universities, technical schools, hospitals, the community college, and so on. Our training program for professional students who are learning their craft brought to our service delivery system an additional 1300 days of service that equates to 10,500 hours of time that we have students learning from us and assisting us in service delivery. I’ll be sharing how we work with the community to immunize thousands of students against influenza and bring kids to local dentists who provide oral health education on Give Kids A Smile Day! I hope all of you will be there—bring your energy pills; you’ll need them!

Sue Catchings, CEO
Health Centers in Schools