2011 National School-Based Health Care Convention Wrap-Up

2011 Convention attendees on a site visit to the SBHC at Marquette Elementary in Chicago, IL
In June hundreds of health practitioners, educators, advocates, and students assembled in Chicago for NASBHC’s 2011 National School-Based Health Care Convention. This year’s Convention was a record-breaking success for NASBHC with more than 800 attendees. The 2011 theme was School-based health care and the community: A partnership that works, which highlighted our focus on collaborations between school-based health centers (SBHCs) and community schools. In addition, our location – Chicago – reflected this year’s emphasis on the Midwest region.

The Convention kicked off on June 27th with a great opening plenary by Andy Goodman, who entertained and inspired the crowd with his presentation on Storytelling as a Best Practice. The next day attendees had the opportunity to join one of two site visits that traveled to community schools with SBHCs to get a firsthand look at our work in action. Later that afternoon our second plenary speaker, Dr. Nicholas Freudenberg, gave an eloquent call to action around partnering public health and education to break the cycle of poverty. Finally, the Convention wrapped up on Wednesday, June 29th with a panel discussion about the role of community schools, moderated by the Coalition for Community Schools’ Marty Blank. If you couldn’t make it to the Convention be sure to watch the plenaries, as well as two workshop sessions, at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasbhc2011/videos.

Streaming the plenaries and a select few workshops online is just one of the ways NASBHC has put special emphasis on sharing the Convention experience with those who were unable to attend. Throughout the conference we also ran a blog with information about workshops, social media, Chicago sight-seeing, and introductions to our Youth Track and Social Media Fellows. There is plenty of reading for you as this year we had 35 blog entries in all. Review and comment on entries at www.nasbhc.blogspot.com.

We also had five Social Media Fellows who kept busy during their three days in Chicago by writing blog entries, tweeting from workshops, and posting videos and photos onto NASBHC’s Facebook page. Be sure to visit our Facebook page and search for our hashtag, #nasbhc, on Twitter to find tons of great resources and information shared by our Social Media Fellows: Parrish, Linda, Lauren, Kristin, and Amanda.

This was one of our most successful annual meetings and we want to thank you – the SBHC field – for all that you’ve accomplished promoting the SBHC movement and keeping kids healthy and in school. NASBHC has been acknowledged for its policy successes, but you, and the excellent work that you do, are the reason for the success. That’s why we gave this year’s Outstanding Achievement Award to the entire SBHC field.