School-based clinics serve community, studentsby Michael BakerPublic Relations The College of Nursing’s school-based clinics represent part of MUSC’s dedication to improving community health. Staffed by MUSC’s nurse practitioners, the clinics provide health services dedicated to prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and education in underserved local schools. This year, two of the clinics collaborated with a group of MUSC’s Presidential Scholars to create an educational project for fourth-graders at a pair of local elementary schools. The seven-week project taught students at Burns Elementary and Fraser Elementary about proper nutrition and exercise. Janet Stevens, manager of the school-based clinics, explained that the project took advantage of the solid foundation for community outreach that the clinics provide. “The clinics exist for two reasons,” she said. “First, we offer primary care services within underserved schools. But we also provide diverse opportunities for CON and other students to learn more about the professional aspects of health care.” The interdisciplinary approach of the clinics meshed with the aspirations of this year’s scholars, who were looking for a project to address the needs of the community. “We really wanted an active theme,” said Scotty Morrow, a Presidential Scholar in the College of Graduate Studies. “We feel like MUSC should have a big role in public outreach and especially in directing health education towards children.” Sarah Johnson, R.N., Presidential Scholar fellow, added that health care education at a younger age is particularly important for the under-privileged or underserved. “The community component of the Presidential Scholars program provides a vital link in health care education, in that it provides insight into the realities of the populations being served,” she said. “Understanding these realities is the greatest psychological challenge for health care providers of our increasingly multicultural society.” The scholars began by taking small steps to understand the nutritional values, or lack thereof, held by the students at Burns and Fraser elementaries. At the end of January, Morrow and the other members of her group organized six educational sessions, three at each school. During the first session, the scholars conducted an open discussion with the students to discover their eating habits. A discussion of healthy snacks included options that are both nutritious and tasty. “We explained that not everything that’s healthy has to taste bad,” Morrow said. “If you don’t like Grandma’s boiled cabbage, there are better-tasting choices that are just as healthy.” As evidence, she and the other group members taught the children how to make ants-on-a-log, combining the health benefits of bananas and raisins with the kid-pleasing taste of peanut butter. Before leaving, the scholars also gave each of the students a food log, allowing the children to document the types of foods they’d eat during the next three weeks. Meanwhile, the scholars continued to challenge the students to expand their minds while reducing their waistlines. The students reviewed their food logs, started an exercise log, and learned how to make a jump rope and how to balance their diets. “The last session was really neat,” Morrow said. “Using what they’d learned over the past seven weeks, the students made a list of healthy foods that they enjoyed eating and healthy foods that they didn’t like as much.” The lists were distributed to the students’ parents as a guide to encouraging their children’s nutritious eating habits. “We really stressed balance in their diets,” Morrow added. “Our attitude was, ‘Hey, we’re not telling you to eat only fruits and vegetables—just have a healthy balance of foods.’ We tried not to be too stringent.” The scholars tied the entire program together with a presentation on the physiological importance of proper nutrition and exercise. During the presentation, Morrow and the other scholars explained prominent health problems in South Carolina, such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. By teaching the students about the state’s major health issues, the scholars hoped to start them on a preventative track to good health. Throughout the project, the scholars worked not just to educate the students, but to understand them as well. Morrow echoed Johnson’s earlier sentiments about psychological aspects of working with the children. “We spent a lot of time building relationships with the kids,” Morrow said. “When you’re doing something like this, it has to be sustainable, not just a one-and-done project. We learned that there’s a huge need for school-based clinics and projects like this.” Although the two groups shared a bond at the educational level, the students found that they related to the scholars on a personal level, too. Both groups were attending school to achieve an ultimate goal, whether it was graduation and college for the elementary students or residencies and private practices for the scholars. But reaching out to the children was only part of the project. The scholars gauged parental support by participating in a pair of family nights at the schools. For Family Science Night at Burns Elementary, the scholars organized a small group session, and at Fraser they presented at a PTA meeting. The events gave them the opportunity to present statistics and facts about diabetes, especially its prevalence in South Carolina and in African-Americans. The scholars described the observable clinical symptoms in individuals with diabetes and explained what the students should do if they thought they might have the disease. Additionally, this allowed the scholars to meet and interact with the children’s parents and to discuss what the children were learning over the course of the project. “The parents were very enthusiastic about what we’d been doing,” Morrow said. “Many of them pulled us aside to tell us about how their children’s eating habits had changed over the past two months.” Both Morrow and Stevens agreed that everyone—the elementary students, their parents, and the schools—showed a great deal of interest in hosting future educational programs, a concept that Stevens asserted is on the agenda of the CON’s school-based clinics. “We’d like to evolve and expand to include a mentor program,” she said. “For all it’s done, MUSC can still go a long way with community involvement. Working with the public, in schools or other areas, is just as valuable to our students as the education they receive on campus.” “We definitely care about being active within the community,” Morrow agreed. “We want people to understand that this is not a static university.” And it seems that MUSC’s enthusiasm matches that of the two schools as well. Fraser Elementary plans to submit a grant to revisit the scholars’ project for future generations of students, and both schools conveyed interest in developing a summer program incorporating nutrition education. As a conclusion to this year’s project, the scholars created certificates of completion to present to the students in May. The ceremony will mark the end of the scholars’ project, but they hope that their work with the students at Burns and Fraser will continue—if not through them, then through the efforts of others. “As a final future direction,” the scholars wrote in a post-project review, “we hope that the next Presidential Scholars group will continue this much-appreciated and beneficial program aimed at helping children recognize that healthy eating and exercise are important to achieve a healthy lifestyle.” These Presidential Scholars participated in the nutrition education project at Burns and Fraser elementary schools: Leonard Egede, M.D., assistant professor, General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics; Sajeevani Gunasinghe, Ph.D., Medicine; Sarah Johnson, R.N., Nursing; Travis Johnson, Medicine; Kevin Kelleher, Dental Medicine; David Klos, Nursing; Scotty Morrow, Graduate Studies; Octavia Peck, Ph.D., Physiology and Neuroscience Friday, April 9, 2004
|
|