School’s Out for Summer! A Few Highlights from Our Recent Youth Work
BPHC Marketing and Communication Director Evan Litwin and BHS Student Assistance Program Counselor at a BHS Elevate Table for the high school Wellness Fair.
What Has BHS Elevate Been Up To?
Just six months ago our team launched an ambitious messaging campaign at the high school called BHS Elevate, which is framed for students as a movement designed to support and uplift one another to live healthy lives and achieve their goals. The messaging is focused on the intersections of mental health and wellbeing, substance use and misuse, and peer interactions. Creatively led by our Communications & Marketing Director, Evan Litwin, and our topical expert and Coalition Director, Mariah Flynn, we’ve spent the second half of the school year designing and amplifying a series of youth-focused messaging firmly rooted in scientifically-backed data and research and vetted best practices in communicating these concepts to adolescents.
We began the year talking a lot about self-regulation techniques and tested strategies for dealing with symptoms of stress and anxiety. Particular focus was put on small things that students could incorporate as a practice easily into their lives or when facing stressful moments. The campaign acknowledged that stress is real, and so are the solutions. We tried to connect students to strategies to meet their specific needs, such as these journal prompts and affirmations for BIPOC students the Trevor Project’s guide on protecting your space and wellbeing on Instagram for LGBTQ+ students.
In the final month of this academic year we focused on education and support around vaping. Some of our more popular messaging focused on the environmental impact of vape waste, which included a BHS Elevate sponsored tobacco and vape waste cleanup day around the downtown BHS for World No Tobacco Day on May 31st. We also called out metals and chemicals hiding inside vapes and the effects they have on the body. The campaign sat down with UVM student and a BHS Elevate young adult team member, Marcus Aloisi to share his journey with vaping, what drove his need to vape, and what is inspiring him to quit.
Throughout the year we had opportunities for students to engage with our content and reward learning with prizes as well as participate in activities for community service hours (like our clean up day). BHS Elevate’s success hinges on working closely with school district partners, such as the BHS SAP, Heather Washburn, who develops strong and trust-filled connections with students and connects them to opportunities to be part of the campaign development. Heather shared a big impact BHS Elevate has had this year was getting more students interested in quitting vaping. We worked with Heather to provide “Teen Quit Kits” that students can pick up for free from Heather in her office. She also offers them support, education, tools, and guidance to help students break away from nicotine. BHS Elevate focuses on normalizing non-use, and while it may seem like most students are vaping, the majority of BHS students do not and we wanted to promote and celebrate that fact!
Burlington Middle Schoolers Have Been Busy Supporting the Community
We continued to offer students at Edmunds Middle School (EMS) opportunities to come together weekly this quarter to plan fun social and prevention activities for their peers. Our staff and the EMS Student Assistance Program Counselor worked with the Church Street Marketplace Association to support 25 students interested in helping promote tobacco prevention and cessation in the Church Street Marketplace. Students helped create short messages that offered quit tips and promoted Vermont’s nicotine cessation resources, 802Quits and MyLifeMyQuit. Students tied the messages to lamposts up and down Church Street to encourage quit attempts and reduce smoking in the Marketplace for the World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day on May 31st.
