Your Making it Better newsletter is here

MDH logo

Making it Better: Minnesota's Health Improvement Log

View this as a webpage

Feb. 16, 2023

Sources of Strength school-wide mental health promotion program

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

10 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Register to participate

Sources of Strength: Promoting Peer Leaders to Model Well-being 

Kathy Magnusson, M.Ed.

Founder of Wildewood Learning Coaching and Consulting Deb Cavitt, MS

Project Director, Prevention Specialist, Advocate and Coach Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health

Sources of Strength is an upstream school-wide mental health promotion program that boosts resilience and builds protection in the lives of young people to become better equipped to navigate life's natural ups and downs. Sources of Strength utilizes Social Network Theory to recruit diverse and influential students known as Peer Leaders to model positive behaviors such as help-seeking and healthy coping. The peer leaders team up with caring, connected, and positive Adult Advisors to instigate a Sources of Strength initiative in their school or community organization through a series of messaging campaigns targeted to increase protective factors and resilience-promoting behaviors in the lives of high school students. Sources of Strength outcomes include an increase in connectedness to adults, an increase in school engagement, an increase in the likelihood to increase positive perceptions of adult support and referring a suicidal friend to an adult.  As of 2023, Sources of Strength is being implemented in four school districts (Moundsview, Moorhead, Brainerd, and Duluth) in Minnesota. Learn about how your organization can get people trained in this curriculum and how it fits with other initiatives in school and other settings to create a more comprehensive public health approach to mental health and well-being.  


Storytelling for advocates workshop

Tuesday, February 28 | 5:30 - 7 p.m.

Online

Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways we have to connect with people and create change as advocates. Move Minnesota and The Arc Minnesota invite you to join us for a storytelling workshop focused on how to tell your most powerful personal narrative to push decision-makers to invest in transit, biking, rolling, and walking across Minnesota.

Join us!

 


April SHIP regional meetings

Save the Date

The April SHIP Regional Meetings will be held virtually.  More information to come.

  • April 11 | 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. | Southeast, Southcentral | Community Specialist - Alice
  • April 11 | 1 – 4 p.m.  | Metro | Community Specialist – Jenni
  • April 13 | 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. | Northwest | Community Specialist - Chelsea
  • April 13 | 1-4 p.m. | Northeast, Southwest | Community Specialist - Anna
 

Local SHIP highlights

SHIP presents on vaping at Blue Earth area school gathering

Striving to inform students, teachers and the public about vaping and drug usage in the Blue Earth area, the Blue Earth Area High Schools held an “Escape the Vape Part II” program at the school at the end of January. The program featured Kaley Hernandez, the SHIP coordinator for Faribault, Martin, Watonwan County SHIP, as well as others. A separate presentation was provided to school staff. Hernandez told attendees that, while the use of other tobacco products has been on the decline among Minnesota students, vaping is on the increase and that vaping devices have significantly evolved from the cigarette style at the beginning, to devices now that do not really appear to be a vape.

Read the full story that appeared in the Faribault County Register.

Do you have a news or social media story about a project you are working on that you want to share with others? If so, please send the information to: kim.engwer-moylan@state.mn.us

ship