Oct
14, 2003
1. Karen Waln was introduced. Welcome Karen!
2.
We
discussed health education/health promotion activities for the year.
Kathy H said that she is planning to focus on a health promotion theme for the month. During November, she plans to focus on the Great American Smoke-Out and offer information to students on smoking cessation. She will place a table with written information in a prominent place in the Union & North Powder schools.
Vicki is planning to offer blood typing and blood
sugar screening in the fall in Cove.
She is also arranging for flu shot clinics in all of
the schools this fall.
Michelle is offering “growing up classes” during
October in Cove and Union.
Other ideas that were mentioned but not decided upon
were “trauma team talks tough”, a staged car accident, and a health career
day.
We agreed that we would work with the schools on a
health fair again this year. Selina has
recommended that this be coordinated with ODOT’s safety fair. She also suggested that an entire class
might be assigned to a particular project, rather than individual
students. I’d like a volunteer who would be willing to contact ODOT to find out
what they are planning and to talk with them about possibly offering their
safety fair thru our fair. If someone
is willing to give them a call, please let me know. At our next meeting, let’s plan to discuss this some more … in
the meantime, if the nurses would like to talk with the teachers in Cove, North
Powder, and Elgin re: doing this again, please do so … this will probably help
our discussion in Novemeber.
Please remember that the nursing students need
health education projects, so if there is anyway that you can involve a nursing
student in planning for and/or implementing a project that you have in mind, I
would encourage you to do so.
Thanks!
I plan to include health promotion as a regular item
on our agendas, so that we can be aware of each other’s ideas and activities
and can complement rather than duplicate efforts.
3. The topic of the HNRS advisory committees was discussed again. In Cove and Elgin, the school site councils are serving as our advisory committee. In Union, it is the Wellness Committee and, in Imbler, the PAC. (There isn’t one in North Powder yet … I’ve talked to Kerri but we haven’t made much progress.) The Cove site council meets the 2nd Monday of every month at 3:45pm in the Home Ec room. The Elgin site councils happen the first Monday of the month at 3:30 or 3:45 in the District Office. The Wellness Committee may be changing its meeting time … Sue will let us know when this group meets. And Selina will let us know when the Imbler PAC meets.
I have asked that one of our nursing staff (either RN or FNP) attend the meetings in “their” schools at least every other month. I would like the counseling staff and FRCs to attend the meetings in their schools at least twice per year. Patrice asked if I wanted staff to attend the school board meetings or the site councils. You are certainly welcome to attend school board meetings, but I see these as serving a different purpose than the advisory committee meetings. The school board is the group that ultimately decides to provide funding to the HNRS, so I think it’s important that they hear from us at least once a year. I plan to visit each school board myself and will invite any of you who are working at that school to attend with me. The other groups – our advisory groups – are more informal and I’d like our relationship with them to be one of exchanging information and ideas. I have thought that the HNRS staff could let advisory committee members know about our activities and plans, and could allow them an opportunity to provide input and make suggestions. (The goal is to give the community’s some ownership in the HNRS.) Both meetings are important, but I envision our presence at a school board meeting to occur once per year and would be more of a formal presentation. Whereas our presence at the advisory committees would be at least every other month and would be a casual exchange of ideas. Please know, however, that I’ll never be unhappy if you choose to attend a school board meeting on your own or go to an advisory committee meeting monthly rather than less frequently. I believe that the more we are in the public eye, the stronger the support will be for our program.
Vicki and I will outline a schedule of these meetings and assign staff to attend on certain months. If you wish to swap months with someone, feel free to do so. Also, we’ll try to plan the schedule so that staff who live in a particular community can be the person to attend the meetings in that community.
4. Diane said that she’s had adult clients who need dental care but do not have insurance or a means of payment. Darla Thompson suggested to Diane that we might write to the dentists, asking them if they would be willing to provide free care. We discussed what should be included in this letter. Diane will draft it and will send it to Nancy for her input. Nancy will ask Lee to put the letter on HNRS letterhead.
5. Lee has created a field on our database for recording student BMI’s. When dental screenings are held, please mark these in the space provided and in the empty box, note the number of students who were rated as being in each of the screening categories. Also, for each classroom health education event, please report this as a group encounter.
6. I updated everyone on the situation concerning allowing the FNP’s to provide health care to teachers in all schools and to community members in North Powder. These services have been stopped due to concerns about liability. An administrator from the Portland campus will be visiting the North Powder clinic on Thurs, Oct 23 with Nancy to review this further.
7. The HNRS data program is not on the Cove school computers. Nancy will contact Jeff Clark concerning this.
Our next meeting is Mon, Nov 17 from 2-4pm. See you then!