Helene Winn Education and Community Outreach Director:

“About twelve years ago, our founder read a white page paper that highlighted the fact that cancer survival rates in the 15-40-year-old age group hadn't improved in almost 40-years. Other age groups were seeing improvement in survival rates (i.e. pediatric cancer, older adults w/ cancer) but survival rates for that group were stagnant. There was a wide range of reasons why this seemed to be the case, but it really came down to late detection. Individuals in that group don't tend to go to the doctor as frequently and/or don't necessarily think "cancer" as a potential diagnosis, which tends to lead to later detection and, consequently, unimproved survival rates.

Our founder, after reading this, felt strongly that people needed to know about the impact early detection can make on both survival rates and treatment options and that there are things we can all do as individuals to give us a better chance of detecting things early if something does start to go wrong with our health and, as a result founded 15-40 Connection.

While the statistic about that age group was a motivating factor behind starting this organization, we now run programs for people of all ages and the health strategies we discuss are applicable whether you're in that 15-40 age group or not.”
 

What will Dr. Connors be speaking about?
Importance of Sleep on Performance. Dr. Connors describes her presentation, “I will go over the sleep cycle to teach the students about what happens when you fall asleep and how much sleep is needed by teenagers and young adults. Additionally, I will discuss the effects of too little sleep on the brain and body and common reasons for too little sleep. Students will learn how lack of sleep influences performance in a negative way, including how the brain needs sleep to consolidate new learning. I will also teach the students how to improve sleep and how to nap for maximum performance, ie the “power nap” vs “catching up on sleep.” We will problem solve around common sleep issues and I will leave room for questions”.

Why?
Our student community has a tendency to do their homework at the last minute. Not much regard is given to the amount of necessary sleep that help fuels academic performance. This coupled with the increase in gaming will help our fifth formers realize that screen time can affect your sleep cycle and this, in turn, will leave you lethargic for class.

Hope Happens Here is an organization started on the St. Michaels campus to help promote mental health awareness and wellbeing on college and high school campuses. There are a number of chapters now on the east coast. This came to me as the result of having a conversation with a former St. Mark’s alumni and he wanted the opportunity to come back and speak about what he was living with and the stigma of not wanting to speak out because of the culture that existed in his sport around mental health. This has been a great year for the newly formed V Form forum. I hope that as this program continues to grow that all of our faculty and staff have the opportunity not only to participate in these sessions but make suggestions both for the curriculum and speakers. Thank you so much for a great year!