Student advocates explore teen health at Y2Y Summit

The L.A. Trust Y2Y Summit on April 1 featured frank talk, strong engagement and a Millennium theme.

Honest discussions and strong engagement were the order of the day as more than 80 students and their supporters met April 1 at The L.A. Trust Youth to Youth Student Health Summit online. 

Student health advocates from seven Student Advisory Boards, LAUSD Student Health and Human Services, L.A. County Department of Public Health, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Black Women for Wellness attended the conference. The event was sponsored by Cedars-Sinai, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Essential Access Health, Health Net and Joe Sanberg, co-founder of Aspiration. 

The half-day learning event included entertainment, activities and six workshops on student health issues, including HPV and other STDs, substance use, daily challenges and safer sex.

Maryjane Puffer, executive director of The L.A. Trust, welcomed the participants. “I am so proud of the work you are doing. You are positive change agents — you are going down in history for improving your schools and communities.” 

The Y2Y Summit was facilitated by The L.A. Trust’s student engagement team, including Robert Renteria, Rosario Rico, Mackenzie Scott and Dannielle Griffin. “Engagement was very high, especially for a virtual event,” Renteria said. “Students came prepared to share, learn and support each other, and they returned a lot of great feedback after the event.” 

No perfect path 

Irma Rosa Viera, a CalState Northridge Student and former SAB member from Elizabeth Learning Center, previewed “Life After High School.” Viera talked about her post-high school experiences and said, “Don’t fear not knowing what your career will be – I thought I was going to be an interpreter and switched to child development counselor.” She added, “There may be downs but finding the silver lining is going to be awesome.”  

Rico said there “is no perfect path” and pointed out that there are alternatives to four-year college, including entrepreneurship, vocational training and military service, which provides funds for college. When quizzed about their career interests, students cited healthcare, business, entrepreneurship, computers, mechanics and engineering as top possibilities.  

Other breakout workshops included Know Your HPV Facts, The Highs and Lows of Substance Use, The ABCs of STDs, Daily Challenges, and Sexual Health and Safe(r) Sex.

Coping with COVID 

L.A. Unified SHHS Organization Facilitator Victor Luna led a panel discussion by the L.A. Department of Public Health (DPH) COVID Youth Advisory Board that featured Evan Bowman, junior at Archer School for Girls; Gisselle Gonzalez, Stanford University freshman; Osiris Lamon, Paraclete High School junior; and Morgan McIntosh, Marymount High School junior.  

Luna asked the youth advisors how they had been coping with COVID. Lamon, a DPH youth advisor, cited talking with friends, spending time with family and friends, and giving back. Other student quarantine recommendations included exercise, studying, painting, anime and “lots of movies.” 

Y2Y meets Y2K

Zoom backgrounds and The L.A. Trust’s in-house DJ — Program Manager Nina Nguyen — set a Millennial mood with graphics and music matching the event’s theme, “Y2Y Meets Y2K.” GrubHub coupons were sent to students so they could enjoy the event’s traditional lunch. 

A social media contest garnered nearly 100 new posts and followers on Instagram. Brayam of Jordan High won the contest and a Nintendo Switch Lite portable game console.   

Nearly 90% of attendees surveyed said attending the Summit was worth their time; 93% said they would recommend the event to a friend. Kristie Garrison, LAUSD Healthy Start Coordinator and an Adult Ally of the Carson High SAB, praised the event and its student participants. 

A Belmont High student said, “It was my first Y2Y — awesome presentations and great to see other youth leaders!” Taaliyah, a student from Washington Prep, said the Summit reached her mind and heart because it addressed mental health and relationships. Isaac from Manual Arts High School said, “I learned new things — things I can call out and use.”

Fighting substance use through awareness and peer education

Vaping is rampant among L.A. students. According to the CDC, more than 30% of L.A. County high school students have reported using e-cigarettes. 

The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health is working with partner Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and funder California Community Foundation to educate and prevent substance use  among Los Angeles Unified students.  

“This is one of our most urgent initiatives,” said Robert Renteria, program manager for The L.A. Trust. “Whether it’s vaping tobacco or using marijuana, alcohol, methamphetamine or opioids, substances are a real threat to our student community —one that’s likely to have grown during the pandemic.” 

The Wellness & Adolescent Substance Use Prevention Project (WASUP) substance use prevention partnership includes Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) training and peer education by student health advocates from The L.A. Trust’s Student Advisory Boards.  

WASUP training for school-based healthcare professionals included a series of webinars discussing vaping and SBIRT. The  SBIRT project  — designed to increase the screening tool’s utilization in L.A. Unified Wellness Center clinics — was deployed at five such clinics, reaching nearly 2,700 students.  

Peer education  

 A toolkit for conducting a preliminary scan of the substance use situation at schools — Conducting a SBIRT Environmental Scan at Your School-Based Health Center — was published last year by Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and The L.A. Trust.  

The toolkit “reflects lessons learned by The L.A. Trust and CHLA during a multiyear initiative to integrate SBIRT into five school-based health centers across South Los Angeles. Funding for this project was provided by the California Community Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.”   

WASUP includes student health advocates and Student Advisory Board members like former Manual Arts High School student Melissa Riaz Reynolds, who is now in college.   

She said her favorite part of being a WASUP advocate was “presenting to the leadership class about underage drinking and making safe decisions.  

“It helped a lot with my personal life as most students are curious and like to experiment, so I am constantly surrounded by drugs or people who abuse drugs,” she said. “The WASUP project taught me how to handle certain situations and protect myself and those around me.” 

Wellness Centers eagerly prepare for school re-openings

Dr. Kevin Fang of CHLA spoke about healthcare inequities at The L.A. Trust Learning Collaborative.

The word of the day was “hopeful” as L.A. Unified representatives, Wellness Center operators and staff from The L.A. Trust prepared for school re-openings at the fourth pandemic-period Wellness Network Learning Collaborative, March 10 on Zoom.

Maryjane Puffer, executive director of The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health, conducted a roll call of representatives from the 17 LAUSD Wellness Centers, noting The L.A. Trust has been hosting the collaboratives for more than a decade.

Health equals success

Guest speaker Dr. Kevin Fang addressed healthcare inequities, saying, “Zip Codes are better determinants of health outcomes than genetic codes.” Children of parents without a high school diploma are more likely to live in an environment with health barriers, Fang said, noting the direct correlation between education and life expectancy, income and smoking.

Fang said chronic absenteeism was a strong predictor of poor academic achievement. COVID-19 has exacerbated an already high chronic absenteeism rate among California public schools, he said, noting it has risen 89%. Proven solutions include school nurses and other forms of school-based health, physical education and individual education plans. Fang suggested ways to increase collaboration between schools and the medical community, including ACES (adverse childhood experiences) training for pediatricians and Wellness Center clinicians and in-class visits by doctors and medical students.

Fang is an attending physician and an assistant program director for the Pediatric Residency Program at CHLA. The former high school biology teacher is also Fellowship Director for the General Academic Pediatrics Fellowship in Health Equity and assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Report card

Victor Luna, organization facilitator for LAUSD Student Health and Human Services,  provided a 2020 report card for the Wellness Network.

Visits to the Wellness Centers were down dramatically due the pandemic and facility closures. Visits varied widely — some clinics never closed and some remained closed for most of the year. Organization Facilitator Gloria Velasquez observed that 2020 was not a good year to determine trend lines in the network.

The two-hour collaborative concluded with a group discussion among the clinicians, educators, Student Advisory Board Adult Allies and The L.A. Trust staff. Topics included telehealth, getting students to make and keep medical appointments, and sexual and reproductive health services.

Appointments for STI prevention and birth control have been most impacted by the pandemic. Without outreach and the confidential setting of the school Wellness Center, students may be reluctant to reach out or use telehealth from home. LAUSD Organization Facilitator Ana Griffin said Wellness Centers and students were countering this through outreach campaigns. “We emphasize to students (who have sexual health questions) that the Wellness Center is a no-judgment zone.”