Success Across the State

The California School Health Center’s 2011 Regional Conference Series consisted of three regional conferences that reached hundreds of school health center staff members, health care providers and advocates of healthy students over a three-month period.

Participants’ reviews of the one-day conferences in Fresno, Oakland and Los Angeles included:

• “Knowledgeable CSHC staff and attendees; was here to promote LEA MAA funding streams but learned more than I thought!”
• “The networking, communicating personal/local issues was golden.”
• “Great energy among participants! Loved the teen presentation!!”

Each conference featured a plenary presentation by a local youth leadership team. The youth spoke of their efforts to educate students at school and in the community about making healthy living choice, including taking full advantage of the school-based health center.

Those efforts include everything from having a booth at the farmer’s market to school-wide assemblies and health fairs, classroom presentations, rallies, and week-long awareness events on campus.

The youth who presented at the conferences are from the Health Institute (Washington Union High School, Fresno); Health Center Student Advisory Board (John Marshall High School, Los Angeles); Belmont Health Services Peer Leaders (Belmont Senior High School, Los Angeles); Balboa Teen Health Center Youth Advisory Board (Balboa High School, San Francisco); Sequoia Teen Wellness Center Youth Advisory Board (Sequoia Union High School District , Redwood City ); Youth Educating and Advocating for Health (YEAH, a program of the Alameda Family Services School-Based Health Centers); and the West Contra Costa Unified School District Student Coalition (students from all six WCCUSD SBHCs).

Each conference also included numerous exhibitors who had products and services to share that were targeted to the school health community.