Resilient Sac at Dr Pan's Community Health Fair in Del Paso Heights

This year I embarked on a year long project to mentor 5 Samuel Merritt RN to BSN Nurse Scholars at Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento during their public health rotation. I have been able to immerse them in ACEs and Resiliency. In addition to researching ACEs, they have been able to attend many community events to include Resilient Sac's monthly meetings, the screening of Resiliency and the talk by Dr Nadine Burke-Harris and the Health Education Council's Health, Faith, and Justice Summit. Additionally, they were able to tour and become part of the Valley Hi Mack Road Community Center and support Ian Levin the director there. This semester the students were required to teach during the semester about a community health concern. To meet the requirement I suggested they host an ACEs/Resilience table at Dr Pan's Community Health Fair. They did the research and astounded me with their creativity. In addition to having hand out information they had Belly Breathing with Elmo, drawing the kids to their table and they created the "Bee Resilient" character. The offered free hugs and the atmosphere was warm and inviting. Despite warnings from naysayers, they then asked parents to take an anonymous ACEs screen on iPhones while their children danced with Elmo. They were able to answer concerns that arose and provide community resources to parents. They also had Spanish interpreters to help out. One Latino women was moved by the questions and told the interpreter this was the first time she ever spoke to anyone about her childhood abuse. Just naming it provided her with such relief. Other parents were interested in the information and resources to help their children. I would give these students an A+ on their assignments. Their thoughtfulness designing the activity was apparent in the way the community received the information.  They also have hard data from the screening to analyze and look for trends from the iPhone screens to enhance their project. Finally, Dr Pan's assistant Karen Abrego let me know how well received the information was and we could look forward to future community activities spreading the work about ACEs and Resiliency. I would like to also thank Dr Toni DuPont-Morales for imparting her wisdom to the scholars.