12.11.24

Did you know….Kidder County District Health Unit (KCDHU - public health) provides services to Kidder County school? Historically this has been for vision screenings, growing up education, check ins, nursing consults, and for in school vaccinations arranged by parents. With only two part time RNs employed by public health, time is limited and spread out over the other health services provided to ALL residents of the county.

This past spring, KCDHU applied for a new grant offered by the ND Dept Health and Human Services that aligns with the ND State Health Improvement Plan. This plan has goals to increase access to healthcare, wellbeing, and health workforce in the state of ND. KCDHU was one of 23 awardees.

The project: increasing health prevention education in rural youth.

How: funding a paraprofessional through the school who works closely with public health to implement different health education topics pre-K through 12th grade.

“I have always had so many ideas on how to integrate health education into the school – investing in our youth will pay us back ten-fold. But I lacked the time and ability to be present at the school frequently enough to make a difference,” says Tricia Steinke, RN and administrator at KCDHU. “This new position allows an extension of public health present in the school all the time, while also helping with staffing at the school.”

This new grant allowed the school to hire an additional paraprofessional to assist with staffing small groups and to focus on medication administration – an ever increasing and busy task previously spread out over the special education department and paraprofessionals. It also allows time for the new paraprofessional to work closely with local public health on prevention education and other topics throughout the year.

The school hired Sarena Lawler starting in mid-September 2024 to fill this position. It was a competitive process that required the right person to be flexible and open to ideas since this was a completely novel position and grant. Sarena lives in Driscoll with her husband and young child. She previously has experience with educating youth within her church organization and also was a veterinary tech at the local vet clinic.

Since September, Sarena has been busy!!

In addition to training on proper and safe medication administration (a demanding task – she passes medications over 10 different times throughout the school day to many different students in both the elementary and high school), she has also worked with public health to develop “pop in” education sessions with each classroom. She partnered with the elementary school teachers on timing and topics.

The first pop in session focused on healthy eating and nutrition – “Super Food” education with “Superhero food” pictures placed on a full body picture demonstrating what body system they help. There was also a poster display of the “MyPlate” food categories (as well as the full body super food model) in the cafeteria for students to look at while waiting in line for lunch. Another pop in session educated elementary students on Screen Time and Safety.

She has completed multiple seasonal bulletin boards with health topics applicable to the school, located where all students can see. She also worked on distributing information via posters and TV screen displays to the high school about Healthy Relationships during October’s Domestic Abuse Prevention month. In addition, she has worked with public health’s tobacco coordinator, Autumn Fallgatter, on vaping/tobacco counseling with students.

All of this while also assisting with small groups as needed throughout the school day.

And that’s only been in less than 3 months! She is currently working on a Winter Health and Safety activity including an interactive BINGO chart and routine chart for when students are home for winter break. Future ideas and topics include hygiene, physical activity education and school-wide challenge, a health fair partnering with NDSU, and increased integration into the high school for topics picked by students! The topics are flexible and can change based on the needs of the school and the students. She has also attended meetings for the middle school Professional Learning Community counsel.

This novel idea and position has generated much interest at the state level. Reporting requirements at the state level as well as sharing locally to the KCDHU board and KC school staff have provided positive feedback for the role. Ensuring that this new idea could be reproducible across the state is so important - many small schools and public health units are similar to Kidder County. By getting creative in staffing, partnerships, and funding we can hopefully improve the future health of not just the county, but also the state of ND.

As community members and/or parents, we would love to know what you think! If you have any ideas for topics to integrate into health prevention education within the school, please reach out! Call KCDHU at 475-2582 or email kiddercountyhealth@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you!