11 minute read
A Beacon of Light
How the deButts Health & Wellness Center lights the way for unparalleled adolescent care.
When Episcopal began discussing plans for a new health and wellness center, the architect met with members of the School’s leadership team, including its medical professionals, to envision how this building would serve the entire community. The group kept coming back to the same phrase. They wanted this building to be a beacon of light for all students — sick and well — to come ask for help, prioritize self-care, and learn the connection between physical health and mental well-being. “We wanted a beautiful, well-lit space that took the ‘infirmary’ out of health and wellness,” said Episcopal’s Medical Director Dr. Katie Humphries. “The goal was to create a beautiful place for students to come and take care of themselves and their friends. They don’t have to be sick to come here.”
The resulting brand-new, light-filled 17,000 square-foot health and wellness center enables Episcopal’s medical professionals to provide unparalleled care to the student body. Constructed to replace McAllister Health Center, originally built in 1934 to serve a significantly smaller, all-male student body, the new building was constructed to address the changing needs of today’s teenagers. Recent data indicates there is a mental health crisis among adolescents, and Episcopal is now equipped to flexibly support our students in all areas of health.
PROVIDING COMPREHENSIVE PHYSICAL CARE TO KEEP STUDENTS HEALTHY
Humphries has always known that adolescent care is her passion, but she was never able to focus on the age group exclusively until coming to Episcopal. Before moving to campus with her family in the fall of 2021, she worked at a community hospital in Atlanta, Ga., where she primarily focused on women’s health and pediatrics. While at the hospital, she learned that “adolescent medicine is hard to practice in the real world,” as most teenagers continue to go to their pediatrician into their early twenties. Now at Episcopal, she can do what she loves and work with a diverse community of teenagers in a 24/7 environment. “It’s such a period of incredible change and growth, and to know that you are one more person in their corner that they can come to is so rewarding for me as a doctor,” Humphries explained. “I immediately knew this was the most ideal place for me to practice family medicine.”
With one director of health services and eight nurses on the team, Humphries has marveled at how seamlessly their office is now able to operate thanks to the building’s resources.
The medical facilities in the health and wellness center comprise:
1 pharmacy,
4 exam and treatment rooms (versus only 2 in McAllister),
7 night-observation rooms with 8 beds,
3 quiet rooms, and a kitchen and break room for staff.
It is night and day from McAllister, the health and wellness center staff says, in creating more cohesion between Humphries, Director of Health Services Beth Blaum, Director of Counseling Kristin Hosmer, and Community Wellness Coordinator Emily Straight.
The health and wellness center works as a regular doctor’s office. The staff provides comprehensive and acute care services, from monitoring students with chronic illnesses to drawing blood and sending out lab work to stitching up a wound. They work with outside doctors and counselors to manage treatment on the ground, and they keep parents apprised every step of the way. The equipment in the health and wellness center supports a full variety of testing, and Humphries looks forward to getting a small X-ray machine soon so that she can provide even more urgent care for the students. “It’s the full spectrum of primary care with some urgent care,” Humphries explained of the services they provide.
When a student comes to the health and wellness center feeling ill, they are greeted by one of the eight nurses. While the nursing staff was the same size in McAllister, they are now much more visible to students thanks to the new nurses station. A nurse will take them into a room for a preliminary conversation, and then determine next steps. Humphries often sees three to four students a day, and is always available for drop-ins, as determined by the nurses. “They’re so incredibly skilled,” Humphries says of the school’s nursing staff who expertly manage the flow of students when every day is different. “They’re so smart and experienced in the boarding school world.”
While Beth Blaum, director of health services, is a member of the School’s administrative leadership team, she is first and foremost a nurse trained to care for students. Before coming to Episcopal, she spent 27 years as the sole high school nurse at Wyoming Seminary, an independent day and boarding school in Pennsylvania, and she brings that wealth of experience to her role. If the day is busy, she will put on her scrubs and jump right in with the rest of the nurses. “Some schools have a health and wellness administrator, but they are not medically trained professionals,” Blaum noted. When Episcopal was adjusting to post-Covid protocols, Blaum often worked a full day as a nurse and took care of administrative tasks in the evening.
The new health and wellness center lends itself to more organic connections between Episcopal’s medical professionals and the student body — moments that were not always possible in much smaller McAllister. “There might be a student on our radar, and having another adult walk through and say, ‘Hey, how are you doing? How’s your day going?’ is so valuable. It’s like a parent walking through a living room.” Fostering those relationships is so important, Blaum has learned, because “it gives the student’s the courage to come to us when something’s wrong.”
Over her extensive career as a school nurse, Blaum has learned to refute the Ferris Bueller notion of teenagers faking sickness to get out of classes. She knows that “every child who walks through our doors has a problem,” whether that problem is the flu, stress over a looming assignment, the pain of a first heartbreak, or an argument with a friend. “Our job is to assess that student and figure out the problem, then determine how best to support them or where to refer them.”
Humphries and Blaum have both noticed an uptick in students who simply gravitate toward the health and wellness center to relax. They come to use the foot and leg massagers in the lobby, to study in the quiet room, or to simply relax in a beautiful and bright space with their friends. In EHS 101, a class all freshmen are required to take to learn the ins and outs of Episcopal, Humphries and Blaum take students on a tour of the health and wellness center to demystify the space and get them comfortable. “We walk them from department to department and show them what each team is doing and why it matters,” Blaum said.
This building messages to our community that we prioritize health and wellness.
PRIORITIZING MENTAL HEALTH TO EQUIP STUDENTS FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS
Another significant change between McAllister and the deButts Health & Wellness Center is the dedicated space to prioritize mental health and well-being. The counseling office, led by director Kristin Hosmer, now has four primary offices for each counselor and the office manager, plus three extra flex offices that may be used for telehealth appointments or in-person appointments with off-campus counselors. Before the construction of the new building, the counseling office was on the second floor of Hoxton House with very little room for the growing number of students. Counseling currently sees roughly 48% of the student body from year to year, up from 30% only five years ago.
“When I first started, there was a lot of homesickness, academic stress, friendship challenges, and more typical adjustment issues,” said Director of Counseling Kristin Hosmer, who came to Episcopal in 2011 from Georgetown Visitation, a day school in Washington, D.C. “Over time, we started to see more impairing kinds of anxiety and bigger mood issues that were making it hard for students to be present in the classroom.” The counseling office was much more reactive 12 years ago according to Hosmer, and the new health and wellness programming enables them to be more proactive in discussing topics that plague today’s teenagers, from the prevalence of mental health issues to the importance of nutrition, sleep, and the dangers of substance use.
When discussing counseling at a boarding school, Hosmer noted the opportunities for more interventions than at a typical day school. “If I know the student had a bad day,” Hosmer said, “I can check in with them in the evening and make sure that they’re doing okay.” At a day school, she would send students home and not necessarily know how they were coping at night. At Episcopal, thanks to the dedicated network of counselors, advisors, coaches, dorm duty adults, deans, and more who constantly check in on students, the counselors have a whole picture of how a student is faring.
Over the years, Episcopal’s wellness needs have changed. With the rise of social media, the isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the increased conversation surrounding mental health, Episcopal realized the students needed more proactive programming to equip them with actionable tools to effectively cope in stressful situations and thrive later in life.
In 2021, longtime community member Emily Straight stepped into a new role as community wellness coordinator to support such programming in a full-time capacity.
Straight, who moved to campus in 1997 with her husband Rick Wilcox, associate director of institutional advancement, has championed community wellness for students, faculty, and staff alike for years, teaching yoga to students and adults, hosting sound healing sessions in Callaway Chapel during exam week, and sharing mental health resources widely. When she began teaching yoga, Straight was schlepping yoga mats and blocks across campus because there was no designated space to practice. Now, everything she needs is in one dedicated place and she does not constantly have to create and carve out spots for yoga, meditation, sound healing, and more across campus.
Straight notes the convenience of all health and wellness programming being under one roof. If a student is distressed and stays after class to talk to her, she can talk to them about the resources of the counseling center and even walk them right down the hall to introduce them to one of the three counselors. The different arms of health and wellness are all right there, and they are able to quickly and efficiently communicate with each other to better serve the students. “Simply put, this building has given us back time,” she said, a sentiment shared by Humphries, Blaum, and Hosmer.
According to Straight, the beautiful spaces within the deButts Health & Wellness Center enable her to turn her classes into labs. “We don’t just have the opportunity to talk about wellness practices, we can now practice wellness practices. We can learn about something and then go to the other side of the space and do some yoga or breathing exercises. We can go to Blake Terrace to sit in the sunshine, overlook the new quad, and talk about environmental wellness.”
Hosmer and the rest of the counseling team have noticed a change in the students now that proactive programs are repeatedly taught throughout their years on campus. By destigmatizing conversations around mental health and continuously reminding students that adults on campus are here for them, Episcopal is encouraging students to seek help, no matter how big or small their problem might seem. “I think one of the biggest protective factors for mental health is a sense of belonging and a sense of community,” said Hosmer of the importance of continuing to highlight health and wellness in all aspects of community life. And thanks to the deButts Health & Wellness Center, the School can continue to build out programming and adapt to changing national trends. “This building messages to our community that we prioritize health and wellness,” Hosmer said in closing.
