Fear not: Youth health ambassadors steel their courage to save lives
Ruskin High School students Shymerra Butler, left, and Jayleona Mayfield have taken on the role of youth health ambassadors.
Know this, all of you who answered “No” with snarky comments on 15-year-old Jayleona Mayfield’s Instagram poll asking who’s going to get vaccinated for Covid:
Jayleona’s not backing down.
Same goes to everyone who tossed away Shymerra Butler’s pro-vaccine flyers and told her they don’t need the vaccine . . . that it’s stupid . . .
Covid-19 vaccination and testing information:
“Some of them even said they think they’ll get the virus if they take the vaccine,” said Shymerra, who’s also 15.
Shymerra’s not backing down either.
Get ready, because one of the purposeful effects of ArtsTech’s Youth Health Ambassador’s training in Kansas City is the fire it’s lighting in its graduates.
“Don’t be scared to get your opinion across,” Jayleona said, describing what the summer training did for her. “Don’t be concerned about being judged . . . Say what you want to say.”
Jayleona was one of the 10 teenagers in the first cohort of youth ambassadors — who exceeded their goal of all together reaching at least a thousand individuals in a vaccination campaign through face-to-face encounters, student-designed flyers and views of social media posts.
Shymerra is part of the second cohort bringing a new wave of energy to the cause.
Jim Nunnelly (left, in blue) talks with the Youth Health Ambassadors at ArtsTech in Kansas City.
They both are Ruskin High School students, and other youths in the program have represented Paseo Academy, Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, F.L. Schlagle High School, Raytown High School, Lee’s Summit North High School, Raymore-Peculiar High School and the Kansas City Art Institute.
All of them have their personal Covid stories that they bare in their crusades. They’re also versed in the facts through classes and interviews with professionals with the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center, University Health Truman Medical Center and the Kansas City Health Department.
This month the U.S. passed 700,000 in Covid-related deaths. An estimated 200,000 of those who died could have survived if they had taken opportunities to get vaccinated. The youth learned that minorities were twice as likely to die from the virus, and that youth ages 12 to 17 make up only 8.2 percent of all those who have gotten the vaccine.
Yes, it’s personal, said Jayleona. She has family members who live with diabetes and underlying heart conditions — people who are most at risk of serious illness or death with Covid. And she is particularly vulnerable because she has asthma.
The Youth Health Ambassadors created personal promotional flyers like this one by Kansas City Art Institute student Brianna Burgo.
That’s part of her testimony, along with the declaration that “I’m totally vaccinated.” And ArtsTech helped her hone the message, distribute it and engage peers in direct and online correspondence.
Nearly two-thirds of the people who engaged in her poll discussion said they were not getting the vaccine. And that just gets Jayleona running harder.
The new health ambassadors program “fits the mission” of ArtsTech, 1522 Holmes St., said Executive Director Juan Tabb. Because ArtsTech, a non-profit that helps young people build artistic and technological skills in an entrepreneurial environment, “is a place of teen empowerment.”
Jim and Janice Nunnelly of Kansas City created and led the program, drawing on Jim’s public health career and their roles as community activists to bring in public health experts. ArtsTech’s programming helped the students design fliers, promotional materials and social media campaigns.
“There are a lot of untapped resources in our young people,” Jim Nunnelly said. “Young people are somewhere between believing in Santa Claus and knowing we can land on the Moon. That is a precarious point in their lives.”
During the health ambassadors training, he said, he could see that students have “something to hope for, something to drive toward and, most importantly, contribute to.”
“I’m proud of these young people,” Janice Nunnelly said. “I feel good that they are our future.”
Shymerra carries on with growing courage. She continues to look for another chance for an opening — in the school cafeteria, or in breaks from class — to ask, “How do you feel about that virus going around?”
“It’s OK to be outgoing and forward with your thoughts,” she said. “People are out there listening.”
The health ambassadors program doesn’t stop with Covid. Tabb and the Nunnellys want to reach in multiple directions, turn a program of 10 ambassadors into a hundred, and influence not a thousand people but tens of thousands.
“This model can help with any public health issue,” Tabb said. “Mental health, chronic disease, preventative care, healthy lifestyles . . .”
No one’s going to back down now.
By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer