At The Intersection of Health and Education: National Health Foundation’s Be A STAR Program

National research has identified a significant link between education and health. High school graduates live longer, healthier lives than dropouts. College graduates have even longer life spans, better access to health care, better dietary and health practices, and overall better health. Unfortunately, about a quarter of California counties have high school dropout rates close to 20 percent or more, including Los Angeles at 17 percent. While there are numerous factors contributing to the dropout rate, one third of female dropouts say that pregnancy or becoming a parent played a role in their decision to leave school. Girls most at risk for teen pregnancy are Latinas from low income communities. There is critical need for education and support services to reach these adolescent girls at the greatest risk for pregnancy and subsequent dropout before they get pregnant, ultimately breaking the cycle of teenage pregnancy. 

With this information, National Health Foundation has implemented the Go Harold’s Way; Be a STAR (Successful Teens Acting Responsibly) Girls Program. Goals of this program include reducing the incidence of pregnancy, improving high school graduation/completion and connecting participants to health and social services and resources in their community. Since its implementation, NHF has provided more than 700 students with the tools and education they need to prevent unwanted pregnancies and abilities to make healthy life choices. 

Haydee and Yvonne are two participants of the Be a STAR Girls program at Ramona High School and are set to graduate in 2018. For Haydee, the program gave her key information she did not have access to beforehand, “I learned there’s many ways to prevent pregnancy and learned all the parts of the female anatomy and what they do. I feel confident about my reproductive health because I’m more informed about different topics that we learned in class.” The weekly topics touched on birth control and STDs as well as how to plan for the future. Yvonne admitted that before being in the program, ‘ditching school’ was a chronic issue. “Before coming to Ramona I was ditching a lot of school and now I come to class every day and will graduate next year. My plans after graduating school are to get a job and go to community college to help me have a career later in life.” In addition to committing to her future, Yvonne has a deeper appreciation for her body and her health, “In the Be a STAR class we got to talk about our physical bodies and how a woman’s body looks on the inside. We also lean to be more confident about our bodies. I now know how to protect myself from getting an STD.”When not in school Yvonne enjoys playing basketball with friends while Haydee likes to try new things. Both students have expressed that this program has given them the confidence to be able to make healthy decisions when it comes to their reproductive health. After graduation, both Haydee and Yvonne plan to attend community college laying the path for their future careers.

                                               

Access to Fresh Foods is Taking Root in Historic South Los Angeles

March is National Nutrition Month. It is also the month that National Health Foundation is beginning to offer nutrition education classes in Historic South Los Angeles. As part of the Champions for Change Healthy Communities Initiative grant received from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, NHF will be conducting 30 minute to 1 hour long nutrition education classes at schools in the community with students and parents. Led by our trained and expert staff, these classes are intended to educate South LA residents about the importance of healthy eating and physical activity. Classes will cover topics such as the USDA’s MyPlate guidelines, the importance of drinking water, reading and understanding food labels, shopping for healthy food on a budget and everyday activities that can help maintain weight and fend off disease.

These classes are one part of the healthy story that is emerging from within South LA.  Our Health Academy students have worked with two, and are currently assessing 8, local food markets to see how they advertise and sell healthy options. They collaborate with store owners to improve the visibility of healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables, and offer help with marketing these options to the community. Their efforts are working! More healthy foods are visible to consumers and one market owner has even changed his food procurement process to receive healthy food from a local produce distributor, making these healthy options more available and cheaper to the community. 

Together, these two approaches are intended to tackle the social determinant of health that is access to healthy and nutritious food. South LA is considered a food desert with few healthy food options available. Furthermore, food insecurity is an issue that many in the community face. The nutrition education classes are being offered with the expectation of shifting the trend of obesity and heart disease in the community.  By reinforcing the positive changes happening in South LA, including the availability of fresh produce at corner markets, we will ensure that every individual and every family has the access to the knowledge and ability to eat healthy and live their best, healthiest life.

High School Health Activist Has Sights Set on Health Career

Aracely Ortiz, 2nd from left, presenting Health Academy's Cafeteria Makeover Project during the 

Youth Summit hosted by LACDPH, April 2015

Aracely Ortiz first heard about the Health Academy during a recruitment presentation in class when she was in 9^th grade. It was also Health Academy’s first year at Thomas Jefferson Senior High. “I wasn’t really involved in anything else at that time,” she explains, “but Health Academy just sounded different from all the other groups I’d heard about, so I decided to go for it.”

She went on to submit an application and sat through an interview, and in the spring semester of 2014, Aracely became a member, or “youth leader,” of the brand-new Health Academy program. After attending a few meetings and experiencing first-hand what the program was about, she was hooked. “At first I was debating whether to continue or not, but everyone in the program was so nice and supportive. It felt like a good place to be.”

Through Health Academy, Aracely learned some unexpected things about her community. She learned how her neighborhood is often considered a food desert or food swamp because of the prevalence of fast food restaurants and liquor stores compared to full-service grocery stores that sell fresh fruits and vegetables. While discussing food swamps, she said, “it was definitely eye-opening. I thought that we already had a lot of things in our community, but now I’ve realized that we don’t have as much as we should.”

Since realizing this, Aracely has actively worked to improve access to healthy food for her school and her community. She often shares information she learns through Health Academy with her family and friends. “I always show my parents the healthy food recipes I get from Health Academy, and we’ve started making them at home… I’ve also taught my parents how to read nutrition labels, and it’s something we look at now when we shop for food”.

Aracely has also taken on leadership roles in several Health Academy initiatives, such as implementing Smarter Lunchroom strategies in the school cafeteria and the Mini Farm Stand project. Throughout her participation, Aracely has been an important voice for her fellow students and community members. One moment she feels particularly proud of was attending a youth summit hosted by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health during her sophomore year, where she presented her team’s Cafeteria Makeover project to other high school students from across the County. “We made changes in the cafeteria that year that decreased the wait times for getting lunch and also got students more excited about the cafeteria food. More students started participating in the school lunch program, and I like to think our project helped… I felt really proud of how we presented our project and I think we were able to give other schools some good ideas.”

Her experience with Health Academy encouraged Aracely to be even more involved in school. Aside from Health Academy, she is now also an active member of her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance chapter, Student Leadership and ROTC. Now a senior, Aracely is in her fourth and final year in Health Academy, where her role has expanded to include Youth Social Media Manager. In this position, she will work with other Health Academy students to create and post content for the NHF Health Academy Instagram page. Aracely is also getting ready for college next year and has already received acceptance letters from California State University, Dominguez Hills and Loyola Marymount University. She aspires to become a nurse someday, and credits her involvement in Health Academy for inspiring her interest in the health field. 

Aracely is one of over a hundred students that has participated in Health Academy which is going into its fourth year through funding from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Recently, National Health Foundation received another Department of Public Health grant, the Champions for Change – Healthy Communities Initiative, to expand Health Academy to another Los Angeles high school; allowing NHF’s Health Academy and its proven benefits to reach many more students like Aracely, their families and the community.

School-Based Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program Leads to Longer, Healthier Lives

Designed and facilitated by NHF, Be a STAR girls is a school-based teen pregnancy prevention program for adolescent females at-risk for a first time pregnancy. The program focuses on healthy behaviors, family planning, skill development, communication, and goal oriented behavior to empower teen girls to prevent unplanned pregnancies and improve their overall health, well-being, and success in life.

We recently caught up with one of our Be a STAR graduates, Ty’Kese, before she headed off to college. Ty’kese epitomizes what Be a STAR is all about. She is a Successful Teen Acting Responsibly. Pregnancy and parenthood cause many young, promising teens to drop out of school. And dropping out of school can completely devastate their lives and shut down otherwise bright futures.

High school drop-outs face unemployment, poverty – and shorter lives. Yes, you read that correctly. There is a significant link between education and health. High school graduates live longer than high school dropouts. College graduates have even longer life spans, better access to health care, better dietary and health practices, and overall better health.

Ty’Kese is smart and interested in making a difference in others’ lives. She’s a vegetarian. She wants to study psychology and social work as an undergraduate and then earn her master’s degree. She prides herself on asking questions and being well informed in the classroom and in the world at large.

Ty’Kese was surprised when the social worker at her high school recommended she get involved with NHF’s Be a STAR girls program. Although she’d had a few pregnancy scares, she really didn’t think she was at-risk of becoming pregnant. Plus, helping to take care of her younger brother at home, she felt, gave her a good idea of what it would be like to be a young mother. It didn’t seem like it would be that hard.

The truth is she didn’t want anything to do with Be a STAR girls, but she sat in on one session and was hooked. She loved getting honest, factual information about health and sexuality. She loved being in an atmosphere where she could freely ask questions. She appreciated having the opportunity to learn more about her own body in a safe environment with other girls. And it was eye opening for her to have myths such as, "you can’t become pregnant when you have your period" debunked.

What is shocking is that Ty’Kese had taken several other health and sex education classes and said she learned more in just a couple of Be a STAR sessions than she ever learned before. Be a STAR prepared her for adulthood by giving her full information about her birth control options and helping her set forth her personal goals for the next two, five, and ten years.

The goal setting exercises caught her attention. Yes, she enjoyed helping take care of her little brother, but now she saw how completely different this would be from actually being a young mom. In one exercise, Ty’Kese created a daily schedule of what her life would be like as a parent. This “as if” schedule showed her an unending string of early mornings, grueling days, and the difficulty of getting someone to watch her baby while she went to school. She could see how extremely difficult, if not impossible, it would be to reach her goals in these circumstances.

Ty’Kese is more concerned, careful, and knowledgeable about birth control than she used to be. Her eyes are wide open. She pays attention to her own body and is self-aware. She wishes Be a STAR was required for all girls at her former high school.

She wants to be a mom one day, when she’s ready, perhaps in a decade, after she has completed her education and has a good job as a social worker. For now, Ty’Kese wants to enjoy being a student and focus on her goals for a life that will be filled with achievements and the prospect of long-term health.