The passage of health-care reform in the House of Representatives was an important and exciting moment for all those dedicated to the idea that all Americans need and deserve access to high quality, affordable health care.

Maine’s two representatives, Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree, deserve a vote of thanks from all of us for being part of the majority that made this happen.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a large and complex piece of legislation, with many important provisions. One of them of particular interest to families and children concerns school-based health centers (SBHCs).

SBHCs provide a vital link in delivering health care to kids who need it most. The health reform bill creates a new program that will support SBHCs at many locations in Maine and around the country.
I am the coordinator of Maranacook Community School’s Student Health Center and a member of the Maine Assembly on School-Based Health Care.

We are thrilled that the House saw the wisdom of incorporating this successful program into a national vision for health care.
Now, we must get on with the equally important job of passing a Senate bill, that ensures access to high quality, affordable health care. To make the important investments in our children that we know are needed, and will pay big dividends in the future, we must finish the work that has been so successfully begun.

Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins must support health-care reform that will meet the needs of all our children.

Cindy Flye
Manchester

To the editor: The passage of health care reform in the House of Representatives was an important and exciting moment for all those dedicated to the idea that all Americans need and deserve access to high quality, affordable health care. Maine’s two representatives, Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree, deserve a vote of thanks from all of us for being part of the majority that made this happen.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a large and complex piece of legislation, with many important provisions. One of them of particular interest to families and children concerns school-based health centers (SBHC’s). SBHC’s provide a vital link in delivering health care to kids who need it most. The health reform bill creates a new program that will support SBHC’s at many locations in Maine and around the country.

I am the coordinator for the Noble Health Center at Noble High School and a member of the Maine Assembly on School-Based Health Care. MSAD #60 has the only SBHC in York County. We are thrilled that the House saw the wisdom of incorporating this successful program into a national vision for health care. Now, we must get on with the equally important job of passing a Senate bill, that ensures access to high quality, affordable health care.

To make the important investments in our children that we know are needed, and will pay big dividends in the future, we must finish the work that has been so successfully begun. Please call Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and ask them to support health care reform that will meet the needs of all our children.

Cynthia Dolben, RNBS

South Berwick, Maine

Hello every one let me start by introducing who we are. We are the young people, the next generation of leaders. We are the ones who will bring harmony, equality, farness, and justice by learning from one another and by teaching one another. We are the leaders of tomorrow and the ones who will lead the way for the ones younger then us. We are the generation of change. We are youth that are trying to make both our community and the world a better place by tackling one issue at a time.

We are a group that is called “What’s Next?” from Portland High School and we are working with the Portland High Health Center to educate teens about health issues by doing peer to peer projects. The reason why we got started was because In the year 2008 about 3 or 4 students where stunned at the rate of teen pregnancies in our school and community so they came together to discuss this issue and to find a way to prevent and to educate. With every group meeting that was held by these students a room was filled with passion and even more interest in all that we could accomplished. From that we planned our first presentation which got Portland high students asking “what next?” will we present. That’s where our club name “What’s Next?” came from. With the help of Portland High School’s health center and our adviser Phyl Rubinstein we continued these presentations and later on we did an HIV/AIDS awareness day which was so successful that we actually ran out of testing tools and the health center had to order more immediately.

The reason why this group and what we do is so important is because it is effective in raising awareness and getting the youths attention* we realized that peer to peer projects and a twist of creativity made people interested in what we had to say; it made people listening and it made many think about their own lives and how they can keep themselves safe. Our presentations helped many students realize that there are places and resources available to them in their communities and better yet their school. This group is important because by it we inspire, prevent, and most importantly educate.

Our health center offers just about every thing the doctors office offers, such as teeth cleaning, birth control, shots, physicals, and we even have a social worker who takes care of mental health needs. We know through research that school based health centers keeps students in school and decreases absenteeism; not only that, but we also Provide health care for student who mights not have it.

If there is no funding to keep the health center open, then like I said before, there may be students that would be left without a school health center that offered many of the same things the doctors office did. If we didn’t have funding then we would be left with out a supervisor to coordinate our club. If we are left without funding, then we cant get creative with much of our projects. Which mean it could be harder to bring in speakers to come and talk to our students. If we didn’t have funding then it would be difficult to continue doing all that we are working on right now.

What we are doing is one step closer to a better world* we are preventing many students from engaging in risky behaviors and through it I know we are changing at least a handfull of students with each project presented. We are Portland high school students and we would like to say thank you for listening.

Submitted by:
Cindy Dolben, RN
School Health Center Coordinator

Please find attached a document outlining the lengthy process that was taken to expand services offered in the Noble Health Center. We hope this will help other health centers considering expanding their services. Patricia Buck-Welton, Proj. Coordinator, Maine Assembly

Microsoft Word – Noble Health Center Service Expansion Plan

Submitted by:
Anne Barker, FNP

Lisa Belanger MSN, NP
Family Health Program Manager

On 10/29 and 10/30, I traveled to Washington, DC as part of the RWJ-funded Caring Across Communities project lead by the the Portland School’s Multicultural Program. As part of the 2 day mtg, we met with staffers from Senator Snowe and Congresswoman Pingree’s office to stress the importance of school-based health services for multicultural populations. We also thanked Senator Snowe again for her courage in moving forward on the health care reform legislation and urged her support of a public option.

Submitted by:
Lisa Belanger MSN, NP
Family Health Program Manager
Public Health Division/H&HS Dept
City of Portland @
Reiche Health Station

Presentation Title : Improving the Health & Well-being of Young People While Addressing Barriers to Learning – The Benefits of a Comprehensive School-Based Health Center (SBHC)

Superintendent Rich Abramson and Health Center Coordinator Cindy Flye provided an overview of Maranacook’s Student Health Center and general information about school-based health centers and the role they play in supporting student success and achievement. They shared how Maranacook’s Student Health Center has evolved over the past 16 years; how acute medical services and behavioral health services are funded; and the benefits of a SBHC.

The informational packet provided to the participants included the Academic Outcome fact sheet from the National Assembly on School-based Health Care – an excellent resource if you need a brief one pager to share with your school administrators and/or school board. (PDF on the Download Page)

Submitted by: Cindy Flye, SBHC Coordinator, Maranacook and President of the Maine Assembly

Two Calais High Students Present Workshop at The National Assembly on School-Based Health Care (NASBHC) Annual Conference  

 Sean Cavanaugh and Jesse Clark, both long-time members of the Calais Middle/High School Blue Devil Health Center’s Teen Advocacy Group (the TAG Team), recently attended the National Assembly of School-Based Health Center’s annual convention as presenters of a workshop titled Herding Cats!: How One SBHC learned to TAG and Release Youth Advocacy Using the Net. The were assisted and accompanied by Jay Skriletz, the TAG Team advisor and Blue Devil SBHC’s Youth and Community Advocacy Co-coordinator. The convention was attended by over 700 individuals from all corners of the United States, and nearly 50 youth advocacy coordinators, school-based health center administrators and providers, and youth advocates registered for the workshop.

The presentation opened with a brief history of the TAG Team’s first five years. In the overview many projects were discussed, both those that have been big successes and those that were less successful. Time constraints are always a difficulty and one common to many youth advocacy groups. The desire to explore the web for solutions to this difficulty is what led to the discoveries the presentation shared at the conference.

Youth Advocacy is a very important service provided by the school-based health centers. It gives youth a voice in the services that affect them most closely and elicits strong commitments from youth to better their schools, health centers, and communities. Herding Cats! Focused on how various internet tools, many of them beta, or development (and usually free), versions can facilitate the work of youth advocates by encouraging “virtual” meetings and collaborations using the internet. Some of the tools were virtual classrooms like moodle.org and wiziq.com; others are the common social networking sites like facebook.com and twitter.com which, even though are not available on the schools’ web-server, are commonly used by many organizations to connect with similar groups and potential funders; video conferencing sites like skype.com and oovoo.com were also discussed as ways that youth advocates can meet with youth from other schools and also with community partners in several parts of the state without traveling.

Both on-line chatting and video-conferencing were actually used to collaborate with students at Indian Township Elementary School and the staff at the Holocaust and Human Rights Resource Center at the University of Maine in Augusta to make progress on the Telling Truth oral history project the TAG Team contributed to this past year. The virtual classrooms are in regular use as meeting places and bulletin boards that team members use to share information and ideas when their busy schedules make it difficult to meet.

The presentation concluded with the lessons the team has learned during the time spent exploring internet tools. Most importantly is that these tools are no substitute for the bonding that happens in face-to-face meetings. These tools offer support for the working relationships and commitments the Team forges during meetings and celebrations. The presentation was warmly received and both Sean and Jesse were highly regarded as public speakers.

The most recent highlight as we talked about at the Board meeting was our recent trip to Washington DC. Kini, Jess ( a student at Maranacook High School) and I went to DC at the request of NASBHC to meet with Senators Snowe and Collins. We wanted to share with them the impact of school based health centers on the lives of students and their families. Jess did a fantastic job of sharing her story and the importance of the health center for all students. We created plaques for the Senators thanking them for their support of SCHIP and encouraging their support(Snowe is a co-sponsor) of the Healthy Schools Act of 2009. Brooke Lehmann who works for NASHBC on the Hill spoke of the national impact and the need for financial stability.

This was Jess’ first time to DC so we were also able to see some sights during our 24 hours there. Very much a successful trip.

Many thanks to Kini and Jess for taking time…it really made a difference.

Lisa Burgess Hodkins, Ex Dir, Maine Assembly