Vermont continues to support a Vermont youth advisory council, VT Raise Awareness for Youth Services (VT RAYS). We will continue to look for opportunities to collaborate with VT RAYS to inform activities related to services or resources for the adolescent and young adult population. Additionally, we plan to work with VCHIP, VT RAYS, and Vermont Afterschool to:
- Build and sustain a combined (VT RAYS-VT Afterschool) youth-led advisory council to address statewide adolescent and young adult health issues, including improving access and utilization of high-quality prevention health services, including behavioral health.
- Expand diversity and membership within combined group
- Support youth leadership positions within the group, including trainings to build skills around youth leadership and/or specific public health priority areas [i.e., youth social emotional wellness].
- Access and utilize data to inform new initiatives, based on youth identified areas of concern
- Support youth lead activities and advise on priority areas that support increased access and utilization of preventive health services for all young people, with a focus on vulnerable and underrepresented youth
- Create opportunities with youth and medical community, public health officials and other stakeholders to share and promote youth voice and experience on COVID recovery efforts
The Health Department will be continue working closely with schools this fall and monitor the current situation and evidence based practice recommendations related to COVID-19 pandemic response and recovery. There will be a strong emphasis on the importance of schools and provider offices strengthening relationships and communication to ensure the best outcomes for students and families. We hope that through these emphasized or renewed partnerships, schools and provider offices will continue to develop, maintain, or improve the way they communicate to ensure students and families are accessing preventive care, addressing chronic illness care, and coordinating on acute needs (like when students present with COVID-19 symptoms, or to promote COVID-19 vaccinations). We are also hoping providers will continue to support local level health related information needs for their communities (e.g. be available to present information or answer questions locally) in alignment with public health messaging. As part of school reopening processes in the fall and ongoing pandemic response and recovery efforts, the Health Department will continue to coordinate and collaborate with the Agency of Education for the 22-23 school year over the summer 2022.
Over the past three years, the VT Dept of Health has engaged in a robust body or work with the Agency of Education and a variety of community partners. As a result of some work with our state legislature, the Agency of Education (AOE) and the Health Department have been working collaboratively to improve sexual health education in Vermont, especially in Vermont schools, and to frame sexual health education within the broader context of comprehensive health and wellness education for sustainability.
A condom availability in schools’ law was passed and went into effect on July 1, 2021. The law requires that all secondary schools in the state (grades 7-12) must make condoms available. The Health Dept and AOE will continue to work in conjunction with several community partners to create supportive materials and guidance for schools to help support this implementation.
Before COVID, the Health Department and Agency of Education staff conducted stakeholder meetings and developed state guidance in response to the legislature’s request to focus on improving sex ed in schools. This group meets regularly to review community and PreK-12 sexual health education activities across the state. This workgroup collaborated to develop the following publications:
- Implementing Comprehensive Health Education: Laws and Regulation (1/30/20) Agency of Education Memo, Secretary Daniel French
- Comprehensive Sexual Health Education and Condom Availability Programs (1/30/20) Joint Memo, Agency of Education, Secretary Daniel French and Dr. Mark Levine, Vermont Department of Health
- Sexual Health Education Resource Guide (1/30/20) Joint guidance developed by the Agency of Education and the Vermont Department of Health
The Sexual Health Education Advisory Group includes representation from several organizations that directly provide, or support organizations that provide, sexual health education to their constituents. Members represent AOE, the Health Department, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE), Outright VT, VT Cares, VT Network, PreK – 12 health educators, and a pediatrician who specializes in Adolescent Medicine and sexual and reproductive health. The group is dedicated to identifying priority topics in sexual health education and delivering professional learning and resources that support high-quality sexual health education. Many of these partners have supported PREP programs in a variety of ways over the years via training and TA. The stakeholder group played a central role in helping to develop the Essential Topics guide and developed and provided topical trainings through the VT Higher Education Collaborative. A webinar for school nurses on the condom availability legislation was also conducted by Planned Parenthood, a key member of the stakeholders’ group, through the Vermont School Nurses Association.
In 2022-2023 MCH’s Adolescent Health Unit will continue to inform the work outlined above. Due to several changes in staff, the adolescent health team will spend time in the fall of 2022 assessing priorities, opportunities for coordination and collaboration, and exploring new work that has arisen as the result of the impacts of COVID. The sexual and reproductive health work will continue, and this work will be further supported and enhanced by VT’s participation in the Leadership Exchange for Adolescent Health Promotion (LEAHP). This is a learning collaborative aimed at building state education and health policymakers’ capacity to improve sexual health education, sexual health services, and safe and supportive environments in schools. The Vermont LEAHP team includes representation from the Health Department, the Agency of Education, and community partner organizations, such as Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and Outright VT, and school- based health educators. Vermont has been part of the third LEAHP cohort since the spring of 2021. The VT Team has participated in trainings and TA opportunities, as well as action planning.
For a sixth year we are contracting with a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist, Dr. Erica Gibson, who has been providing training and TA to our PREP program staff, and the broader sexual health education stakeholder group efforts. This year, Dr. Gibson will also continue to provide training and TA to VT Afterschool Inc. In the plan year efforts will continue to be expanded to help support the professional development of sexual health educators across the state. These include health educators in Vermont’s middle and high schools, school nurses, community based sexual health educators, and afterschool professionals. This will include offering professional development opportunities both in person (where possible) and remotely.
Another critical area of work that has emerged and will continue relates to eating disorders. Dr. Gibson is a leader in VT and oversees the Adolescent Eating Disorders Clinic at UVMMC. Early in 2022 MCH staff along with Dr. Gibson served on the planning committee for a one-day multidisciplinary training related to eating disorders. Over 400 people from across the state attended the training. The planning group will continue to meet and will follow-up on key lessons learned as a result of the training in order to identify ongoing supports and training opportunities for health care providers, mental health clinicians, school nurses and others. The MCH Director of Adolescent and Reproductive Health will serve on a legislatively enacted Eating Disorders Working Group tasked with assessing services in Vermont for individuals with eating disorders and making recommendations to the General Assembly on how access to care can be improved, including recommendations for expanding and improving existing services.
MCH will continue to have leadership engaged in various partner initiatives, including co-chairing the Youth Services Advisory Council (YSAC), which promotes shared responsibility across state and community stakeholders for achieving positive outcomes for youth and young adults in Vermont; and collaborating with the Agency of Education to conduct an assessment of the current landscape related to sexual health education, and following up on activities that were recommended to the state legislature in January of 2020 for improved standardization of sexual health education.
The Youth Services Advisory Council will play a critical role in ensuring the success of the Statewide Youth Council, which was enacted this past legislative session. With Vermont Afterschool and the Division of Maternal and Child Health, the YSAC will advise on recruitment, application, and training, and convening processes as this group coalesces.
MCH will continue to fund Vermont Afterschool’s work around preventing risk behaviors and promoting strengths for youth. Vermont Afterschool will be entering its fifth year of funding from MCH, which continues to support the work of the Youth Voice Coordinator and the Youth and Community Health Coordinator, as well as many elements of the Vermont Youth Project and Youth Councils. VT Afterschool has become a recognized leader in our state for their collaborative work across many priority topics and with many partners, but especially for their commitment to youth voice and the establishment of youth councils. We also are planning to promote collaboration (through this grant relationship with VT Afterschool) between VCHIP’s Youth Health Improvement Initiative and VT Afterschool to support the work of the VT RAYS, where VCHIP would continue to provide opportunities to promote youth voice and input with the medical and public health community, and VT Afterschool would support recruitment, logistics, facilitation, administrative oversight and managing youth incentives.
MCH Adolescent Health Program Manager will continue to participate in the Vermont 9to26 Coalition in the year ahead. The focus of this coalition is to ensure that all young people ages 9-26 are safe, healthy, supported, educated, and engaged. MCH staff are able to provide guidance on best practice approaches to out of school programming, performance measurement and stakeholder engagement.
We hope to explore leverage points with Vermont’s health reform system given that adolescent well care visits are an ACO measure. Health Department leadership sit on several ACO subcommittees. Vermont MCH has developed supporting materials on Clinical & Community Strategies to Improve Adolescent Well Care Rates that have been and will continue to be distributed widely to ACOs and Unified Community Collaboratives.
MCH previously worked with VCHIP through the youth health improvement initiative on finishing an updated sports clearance form that highlights the importance of annual well care. This form had been reviewed by the Vermont chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Vermont Academy of Family Physicians. It was shared with the Vermont Principals Association’s Sports Medicine Advisory Council. We planned to roll it out during the previous two school years, but there were some delays, and this activity was later put on hold due to the early closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 response also took priority during the previous school year. We plan to review the current iteration of this document to update it using this plain language lens to ensure a product that is easily understandable and continues to highlight the importance of an annual well care visit (especially for the adolescent population). We hope to do this in partnership with VCHIP and the Primary Care Public Health Integration work group.
MCH plans to continue an effort to partner with VCHIP’s, Youth Health Improvement Initiative and the Wisconsin-based, PATCH (Providers and Teens Communicating for Health) program to promote the use of, PATCH for Teens Toolkit. This program provides school health educators, health-related professionals, youth workers, and other adults the materials and resources needed to teach young people about their rights and responsibilities in health care settings. Our hope is that this curriculum that can be delivered in a health class will help to empower youth to access their primary care provider and develop skills that will help them to access recommended preventive care and care as needed. Recruitment for this activity was delayed the last three school years. We reconnected with the program in Wisconsin and planned to recruit in the winter/spring of 2019/20. Due to the closure of schools in 2020, this was not accomplished. Additionally, COVID-19 pandemic response efforts continued to take priority over implementation of this program during the previous two school years. The PATCH program had previously confirmed we are still able to access the kits, so we plan to revisit recruitment in the fall/winter after reconnecting with the PATCH Program. We hope to identify schools willing to try this curriculum and report back on reactions. We also plan to share information about PATCH through other electronic communications with schools, and through the Health Department School Liaisons.
MCH will continue to promote healthy behaviors among youth through an empowerment model through promoting of UP for Learning’s Getting to ‘Y’ program. Getting to 'Y' is an opportunity for students to take a lead in bringing meaning to their own Youth Risk Behavior Survey data and taking steps to strengthen their school and community based on their findings by addressing risks and promoting strengths. MCH is also continuing to support, Personal Power and Community Connections described elsewhere in the report. UP for Learning is planning to adjust program delivery strategies as needed relative to public and school health needs during the next school year. P2C2 (formerly M3) has been continuously improved and adapted to have a deep and more sustained impact by consistently refining it to be more relevant, engaging, and responsive. For the coming year, the P2C2 concepts will move out of a siloed P2C2 program to be integrated into all of UP’s youth empowerment programs to fully align with the Whole School/Whole Community/Whole Child national initiative, which takes a holistic approach to the well-being of children and their community. All GTY and P2C2 resources and materials are adapted for remote, hybrid, or in-person educational settings.
MCH plans to continue its work to engage providers and school partners regarding school-based health centers (SBHC). MCH will continue to identify its roll regarding providing infrastructure and convening support to school-based health centers. We will continue to attempt to complete & build upon our assessment of SBHC across the state, examine opportunities to establish connections to primary care medical homes, and opportunities for common indicators and measures across centers. MCH has reached out to existing SBHCs to form what we’re calling, Vermont’s SBHC Peer Collaborative. We plan to build upon information gathered during collaborative calls to help direct the future of our MCH support related to this work. We will use these opportunities to highlight MCH Title V and EPSDT priorities and explore opportunities to encourage participants to consider objectives and measures that align with MCH priorities (such as adolescent well care). Additionally, we will continue to explore opportunities to engage the School Based Health Alliance, and continue to use this national resource to learn more about SBHCs and begin to network with national partners and build relationships for possible technical assistance and resource sharing. One of Vermont’s adolescent health leaders was invited to participate in the School Based Health Alliance State Leader’s monthly call, an opportunity to hear about issues happening nationally, and opportunities to learn from this leadership community and share resources. Thanks to steps taken over the last two years to implement telemedicine opportunities in primary care (during the pandemic), we are interested in exploring what types of school linkages could be continued, made, or sustained to continue to increase access and connection to primary care in the school setting. MCH will be partnering with the Youth Health Improvement Initiative at VCHIP to continue develop and implement an assessment tool for our existing SBHCs, identify common assessment measures of SBHC implementation and desired outcomes, consider training and development opportunities with SBHCs, and gather youth perspectives on SBHCs. YHII will be continue supporting surveying of our SBHC peer collaborative members. They will then be sharing findings with MCH and other stakeholders when available. Competing priorities for schools and providers at these sites has impacted participating in surveying opportunities, but we plan to continue to our assessment and identify new partners as more schools consider SBHC’s. MCH also partners with the Office of Oral Health at the Health Department in relation to their 802 Smiles program which supports school-based oral health access.
MCH will continue to fund travel and work stipends for school nurse’s participating in Vermont’s School Nurse Advisory Committee. The primary role of the School Nurse Advisory Committee is to review and update the Standard of Practice: School Health Services Manual, maintain and update the new school nurse orientation, and to strengthen the school nurse workforce development. In the upcoming year, the State School Nurse Consultant and the School Nurse Advisory Committee plan to revise the format of the Stands of Practice: School Health Services Manual and create documents that support student, family, and school community physical and mental health and resilience during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The SSNC and the School Nurse Advisory Committee will also evaluate and revise the current new school nurse orientation content, and potentially create continued training and support opportunities for school nurses statewide. The SSNC will also be working with a vendor to support School Nurse Leadership training & and LEA grantees who will receive CDC Public Health Crisis Response funding through the Health Department to support implementation of their School Nurse leadership vision.
Please note: Only those strategies that link with national and state performance measures are identified in the Action Plan Table for this section.
To Top
Narrative Search