Highlights

2009

Ketchikan Wellness Coalition Challenge Day

Approximately 340 students and 90 adult volunteers participated in Challenge Day, an event to help empower students to shape their own futures and develop positive, healthy relationships with others. They learned new communications skills and help diminish social and cultural barriers by discussing them in a positive way. The participants were able to focus on the universality of issues facing all members of their community and strength ties.

2008

SEARHC Dental Carries Project

Studies demonstrated that dental carries (tooth decay) is an infectious, transmittable disease and that a child’s dental health is often strongly related to the mother’s dental health. Dentists at SEARHC decided to fight the disease in the whole family by giving not only the children, but ever family member and pre-natal patient a caries risk diagnosis. Those with a high diagnosis are treated to prevent the spread to their children. They provided over a thousand fluoride varnishes and several hundred sealants to children in the high risk category, with a near perfect success rate!

2007

SAIL Playground

This innovative park involved children and the community in the design and construction of a community park. The process proved to lower construction costs, increase use and decrease vandalism. The playground stimulates both active and imaginative play in diverse settings reflecting the natural environment. In an area with limited playground availability this playground provides kids with the opportunity to exercise and strengthen body and mind.

2006

Sitka Fine Arts Camp

411 Students from 12 states, 3 countries and 30 Alaska communities, representing eight Alaskan ethnic groups, attended. Students made significant gains in arts knowledge and skills and demonstrated the highest artistic level of any camp in previous years. One student commented, “This camp matters to be, ‘because I don’t have an artistic outlet in my town so I look forward to camp to bask in the arts’”.

2005

2004

SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium: Sitka Youth First Responders

The Sitka Youth First Responders teen rescue squad has formed and has 13 youth members trained in emergency response. The team meets weekly and many members have already expressed an interest in health careers. Sitka Youth First Responders have helped with many local events including disaster drills, a state Emergency Medical System symposium, high school games, and local fun-runs.

In the fall of 2005, the First Responders assisted the local office of Alaska Public Health with planning and conducting a mass vaccine in conjunction with local hospitals, the middle school, Sitka Fire Department, and the Coast Guard. 924 people were given flu shots in a 5 hour clinic. The team is currently working with school principals and community members to provide additional assistance in a variety of settings.

2003

Community Connections: Early Learning Program

Provided training to more than thirty Alaskan Speech Language Pathologists and Occupational Therapists to earn certification in oral motor assessment and intervention. This was the first workshop on oral motor therapy techniques ever held in southeast Alaska. It is estimated that 1500 children will benefit from this initiative in a five-year period.

2002

Bartlett Regional Hospital: Neonatal Resuscitation Training

Provided a nurse further education that allowed her to certify approximately 60 additional hospital employees in neonatal resuscitation. It is projected that this training could improve the health outcomes of up to 40 infants annually.

2001

Teach Your Children Well, Raven Radio and the Writer's Block

Weekly statewide radio broadcasts about healthy child development, including broadcasts on immunizations, dental health, second hand smoke, and emotional health. This popular radio program has led to a parent support program, administered by Center for Community in Sitka.

2000

REACH, Family-Focused Language Intervention

Improved speech and language services to young children, families, and early intervention staff. Parents were taught individualized strategies to support their child's speech and language delays.

Other families participated in an eleven-week parent-child playgroup for children experiencing developmental delays. Early intervention professionals were trained in relationship-based intervention models to be shared with staff throughout Southeast Alaska.

1999

Parents As Teachers, Hoonah City Schools

Expanded a staff's certification in family training from birth to three years to birth to five years. This training resulted in expansion of Parents As Teachers capacity to provide home visits, parent meetings, and activities through to families of five-year-old children.

Teach Your Children Well, Raven Radio and the Writer's Block

Weekly statewide radio broadcasts about healthy child development, including broadcasts on immunizations, dental health, second hand smoke, and emotional health. This popular radio program has led to a parent support program, administered by Center for Community in Sitka.

1997

Health Round Ups, Tlingit & Haida Head Start

Resulted in over one-hundred children receiving health and Head Start screenings in several locations across Southeast Alaska.

1996

Alaska Marine Safety Education Association

Developed a cold-water safety curriculum for grades K-12, assisted teachers during their day of first training, and provided personal flotation devices and immersion suits for hands-on training. This training resulted in over 100 Southeast children learning cold-water safety in the first year of curriculum implementation.

Actions for Health, Southeast Island School District

Helped students identify a health habit they would like to develop, set an associated goal, and track their success in achieving this goal. Schools were located throughout Southeast Alaska, including schools on Prince of Wales Island and Baranof Island, schools in logging camps, fishing villages, and subsistence communities.

A random sample of participating students demonstrated nearly three-quarters of the students felt they had improved their health as a result of the project.

Lactation Specialist, Evergreen Hospital Medical Center

The training of this person resulted in 300 new mothers having access to lactation consultation, increasing the likelihood that these mothers would initiate breastfeeding.

1994

Teen X-Press Theatre Company

A partnership of Southeast Alaska Regional Health Corporation, Perseverance Theatre, and Juneau-Douglas High School, provided an opportunity for Southeast teens to express themselves and raise community awareness while doing so.

Issues explored through the youth performance included: alcohol and drug use, date rape, fitting in with peers, suicide, pregnancy, relationships with parents, AIDS and dating. The project increased the self-esteem of participants and their raised their awareness of the issues teens face.