Sept. 16, 2016 -- During the 2015-2016 school year, a team of Boulevard staff embarked on a journey to enhance its partnership with the Cleveland Clinic by participating in a student wellness program through the American Public Health Association. The team has successfully completed the APHA's initial training, making Boulevard the only elementary school in the country to have done so.
The group consists of Principal Shelley Pulling, School Social Worker Karen Allen, School Counselor Betsy Race, District Head Nurse Linda Rudy, Cleveland Clinic mobile unit Nurse Practitioner Cathy Quinn and Cleveland Clinic administrator Loree Rudd.
Beginning in February, the team spent 15 hours of their own time participating in the online learning modules, completed seven 90-minute facilitated discussion sessions, and spent many additional hours reading the materials.
The staff members attended the National School-Based Health Care Convention in Washington, D.C. over the summer and learned about several topics, including motivational interviewing, strategies for promoting mental wellness in youth, understanding the critical connection between student attendance and health and how to treat a child with trauma.
This year, the team will continue the work in Phase two. The Boulevard staff recently participated in a workshop that taught strategies for helping to manage chronic stress in its population. The team will be administering an individual assessment of fourth and fifth grade students. The assessment, called RAAPS, will help determine issues the students are dealing with and begin to design programming and support to help create equity, and therefore increase wellness and student success.
"We are excited to embark on this journey," said Ms. Race. "We not only have the Cleveland Clinic unit coming to Boulevard two days a month, but we are forming a more solid partnership through our School Based Health Center approach, which should benefit our families by providing much more in-depth care."
Ultimately, the hope is that this important work meets the overall goals of increasing attendance, increasing academic proficiency and reducing youth health risk behaviors.