Student health advocates prepare for a healthy year

Members of  The L.A. Trust’s Student Advisory Boards prepared for the new school year at The L.A. Trust Student Health Summer Learning Academy online.  

Student Advisory Board members from LAUSD Wellness Center campuses prepared for a healthy — and challenging — new school year at The L.A. Trust’s annual Summer Learning Academy on student health online July 27–30. 

“The turnout and level of engagement was impressive,” said Senior Program Manager Robert Renteria. “These student health advocates are highly motivated — it is an honor to work with them.”  Students from six LAUSD campuses — Belmont, Carson, Crenshaw, Jordan, Locke and Washington — attended. The students were joined by staff members from The L.A. Trust’s student engagement team, LAUSD Adult Allies and several special guests. 

Students were given an orientation on the Wellness Centers and The L.A. Trust, minor consent and confidentiality and an overview of youth mental health.  

Carla Lavelle and Frank Dussan, psychiatric social workers from LAUSD, helped lead a discussion on mental health and resources. Attendees watched and discussed More than Sad, a video on depression. Stigma was identified a leading barrier to youth seeking treatment. 

“As students go back to school after more than a year of pandemic isolation and stress, it’s important that these peer educators have all the information and resources possible,” Renteria said. 

Other topics included data and public health, including The L.A. Trust Data xChange, selfcare, sexuality and identity, healthy relationship and how to create and conduct health campaigns. 

It was a year that challenged almost everything

Empty classrooms and full intensive care units created a year of unprecedented challenges for Los Angeles students, educators and healthcare providers.

A pandemic. An uprising. An education crisis. And an economic crash. The year 2020 was one of the most challenging years in our history — and an outsize share of those challenges were borne by the students, educators and healthcare workers we serve. 

“Our friends rallied around us, and we rallied around them during this crisis,” said Maryjane Puffer, executive director of The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health. “But the problems experienced in 2020 — healthcare and income disparity, racial injustice, distrust of our institutions and inadequate public health facilities — did not start in 2020 and will not disappear in 2021. We have so much work to do.” 

The L.A. Trust adapted quickly to the pandemic and school closures in mid-March, transferring in-person outreach to social media and face-to-face meetings to online platforms like Zoom. 

With schools on lockdown and many Wellness Centers closed, The L.A. Trust redoubled its efforts to address the primary, oral and mental health needs of Los Angeles Unified students: 

Held Wellness Center Learning Collaboratives online in May, October and December to discuss urgent issues related to the pandemic. The three online events were attended by a total of nearly 200 healthcare providers, researchers and L.A. Unified facilitators. 

Provided its stakeholders with information about the unfolding pandemic, interviewing experts like Barbara Ferrer, head of L.A. County Public Health, and Jim Mangia, president and CEO of St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, operator of Wellness Centers at Lincoln, Manual Arts and Washington Prep, which have remained open during COVID. 

June: Distributed more than 50,000 toothbrushes as part of Operation Tooth Fairy, garnering widespread media coverage about the importance of maintaining oral health. 

July/December: Conducted virtual convenings of The L.A. Trust’s Oral Health Advisory board to help providers pivot during COVID crisis. An in-person meeting was held in March, pre-COVID. 

July: Moved its nutrition programs online, reaching nearly 80,000 students and community members with Facebook workshops and professionally produced cooking videos. 

August: Trained student health advocates at our first-ever Summer Academy and supported Student Advisory Board members and their allies throughout the pandemic. 

August: The L.A. Trust launched our Student Mental Health Initiative, funded by a $100,000 grant by Cedars-Sinai and a $50,000 grant by Health Net. The initiative will train students as peer leaders through The L.A. Trust’s Student Advisory Boards, increasing awareness of symptoms like anxiety and depression, and building positive coping mechanisms and self-referrals to care. The initiative will include student-run social media campaigns and online trainings such as “Youth Mental Health First Aid” starting in the fall. 

September: Educated more than 40 state legislators and their staff on the need for school-based healthcare during a first-ever virtual Advocacy Day. 

September: Launched a new website for The L.A. Trust with expanded resources and a new rallying cry, “Putting the care in student healthcare.” 

October: Helped promote and conduct the online California School-Based Health Alliance Conference, attended by nearly 1,000 health advocates from across the state. 

October: Released a Data xChange Report on the impact of L.A. Unified Wellness Centers over the past five years. 

Fall: Partnered with L.A. Unified and KLCS-TV to broadcast The L.A.Trust-produced nutrition and oral health spots reaching an audience of up to 2.3 million students and family members. 

Fall: The L.A. Trust’s program managers, adult allies, director of programs and executive director completed the eight-hour Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) training and received certification as YMHFA providers. The L.A. Trust’s program manager in turn trained dozens of Student Advisory Board members in the How to H.E.L.P. A Friend curriculum. 

November: Worked with the office of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and the T.H.E. Clinic to distribute thousands of N95 protective masks to frontline healthcare workers at Los Angeles Unified Wellness Centers. 

December: Created a new Oral Health Toolkit to put resources at dental providers’ fingertips. 

“It has been a devastating year,” Puffer said, “and the effects are far from over. But last year witnessed unimaginable courage, resilience and resourcefulness. We are so proud of our students, educators, healthcare providers and partners in Los Angeles Unified and beyond.”

Student advocates prepare at The L.A. Trust Academy

Student advocates, shown here at The L.A. Trust’s Y2Y Conference in March, discussed how to conduct peer campaigns in the new school year on August 4-7.  

Two dozen Student Advisory Board members from five Los Angeles high schools met with staff members of The L.A. Trust for its first-ever Summer Academy learning session August 4-7, 2020. 

The students learned how to conduct peer-to-peer health campaigns, discussed ways to encourage visits to L.A. Unified Wellness Centers, and gained greater knowledge of healthcare disparities. The four-day pilot event was attended by SAB members from  Crenshaw, Jordan, Locke and Washington Prep, as well as students from John Marshall High School.  

The online Academy was facilitated by four staff members from The L.A. Trust: Robert Renteria, program manager; Eddie Hu, program manager; Mackenzie Scott, student engagement program coordinator; and Dannielle Griffin, student engagement program assistant.  

Organizational facilitators from L.A. Unified Student Health and Human Services helping to inform and guide the students included Gloria E. Velasquez, Victor Luna, Rene Bell-Harbour and Maggie Yu-DiPasquale. 

Impressed  

Renteria said he was impressed by the students’ commitment to the 20-hour learning program. Scott said the students were knowledgeable (“they could have presented my learning modules”) and engaged (“the chat was blowing up like crazy.”) 

Students discussed mental health, sexual and reproductive health, substance use prevention, public health, and their own career development. Wellness Center staff logged on to brief the students on updated hours and services and how to refer peers to the clinics. 

Students took a break from their learning to share their insights with The L.A. Trust Board of Directors at their annual retreat, August 6. Maryjane Puffer and Board members thanked the students for their frank accounts of how the pandemic is affecting them and their communities. 

The L.A. Trust’s Student Advisory Boards have met since August 18, the first week of L.A. Unified’s 2020-2021 school year. Renteria said, “Thanks to the Summer Academy, we have students ready to conduct campaigns about student and community health and to help increase awareness and use of the primary, mental and oral healthcare services offered by L.A. Unified’s student and family Wellness Centers.”

Student Advisory Board allies share best practices to engage students

Program Manager Robert Renteria and other staff members from The L.A. Trust led the spring 2020 meeting of Student Advisory Board Adult Allies on January 29.

Adult allies who work with the Student Advisory Boards of the LAUSD’s Wellness Center network met at The L.A. Trust January 29, 2020 to discuss outreach programs to improve student health.

More than a dozen Adult Allies and healthcare advocates from across the Wellness Center Network attended, including Norma Ahumada, Cassie Angu, Hanna Christianson, Kristie Garrison, Karina Gonzalez, Annette Hernandez, Deannie Moreira, Marina Quintanilla, Adam Renuet, Miriam Villaseñor, Stephan Salazar, Miguel Topete, Michelle Torres and Brenda Villatoro. 

Strategies and tactics

The half-day meeting, facilitated by Program Director Robert Renteria, included tactics to engage students, best practices sharing and a review of resources available from The L.A. Trust and other sources. 

The meeting focused on five student health campaigns prioritized by The L.A. Trust: 

• Healthy Eating and Active Living, designed to reduce childhood obesity and promote healthier eating habits and more active lifestyles.

• Essential Access Health, designed to increase awareness of sexually transmitted disease, increase chlamydia screenings at school-based Wellness Centers and reduce teen pregnancy rates.

• Not Us, designed to encourage vaccination for the human papillomavirus (HPV) and reduce related cancers.

• TUPE (Tobacco-Use Prevention Education), designed to educate students about the health risks of vaping and using drugs, including cannabis and tobacco.

• SBIRT, a Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral-to-Treatment practice used to identify, reduce and prevent the use and abuse of alcohol, tobacco and drugs.

Peer education key

“Our Student Advisory Boards are key to helping students make the right choices, and our adult allies ensure they get the resources they need,” Robert Renteria said. “The L.A. Trusts works directly with these student health leaders and we are looking forward to hearing their ideas March 2 at our annual Y2Y (youth-to-youth) Summit.”

“Every student, like every adult, has the power to improve their health,” Rosario Rico added. “It is up to those of us in the student health community to make sure students have the education and healthcare access they need. 

“I am amazed at the passion of our adult allies and the passion of our student health advocates. They are making a real difference in the health outcomes of LAUSD students.”