I wish that I could say that I wasn’t forewarned about what it takes to keep a blog up and going, but I am married to an active (gluten free) food blogger aka Gluten Hates Me.
However, I feel now, more than ever that it is important to tell the story of what we are doing in Wake County…trying to get a school-based health center established.
We’ve been busy…
For the past few months we’ve been in a planning phase, trying to think through what the next two and a half years are going to look like…we are advocates, we have advocated, but never like this. As surprising as it may seem, getting the decision makers to buy-in to the idea of establishing a health center on the grounds of a school is fairly controversial. Some people think that the main thing that school health centers do is hand out condoms and sign teenagers up for abortions.
Sometimes I feel like what we do as advocates is just talking to people about what is actually going on.
Truth #1: No way do school health centers administer and type of surgical procedure, such as an abortion, on the grounds of a school.
Truth #2: It is actually a North Carolina state law that no one can hand out contraceptives on the grounds of a school within the North Carolina public school system.
But let’s be honest, do school health centers impact the reproductive health of the students that attend that school…ABSOLUTELY. But why is that a bad thing???
What these people don’t realize is that the issues that they spend so much time arguing about actually comprise about 10% of what a school health center actually does.
But let’s get back to our team and what we’ve been doing!
We recruited three new youth to our youth team of five (pictures pending). We’ve also been making lists of who our strategic partners are going to be. We are moving close to the end of our “planning phase” into our “getting down to business phase”! This is a fun phase. We made a video, with some rough editing by yours truly.
Note: the video stops around 1:50, so you can stop watching after that :)
What else is on the radar???
Well, we just recently started a “Cause” on Facebook…be sure to check us out. We are recruiting people from across the country to get their hands dirty with our project…
Establish a School-Based Health Center in Wake County!
Be sure to click above and like the cause. We are also getting out and trying to have some face to face meetings with some people and organizations who we think are going to be able to help us out…
* Local Community Health Clinics
* Wake County School Board Members
* PTA Members
* Parents
* Other Youth Serving Organizations
And I am learning that one of the most important people that we can bring on a medical provider who can help us convene all of these people together, in one place, to rally around this cause. The medical provider is key, because once we begin to work our way into the school system, they will be able to support medical staffing to be able to provide health care services to the students that need it.
Hey, did you know that almost 11,000 students in Wake County are uninsured? Most likely, those youth also don’t have a medical home and rarely access the services they need.
Do you know how many young people are uninsured in your community?
