Chesapeake Regional Chapter

Officers:

President:
Kirsten Hawkins, MD, MPH, FAAP

President-Elect:
Renanta Arrington-Sanders, MD, MPH

Treasurer:
Lekeisha Terrell, MD, MPH

Secretary:
Lana Lee, MD

Members-at-Large

David Reitman, MD, MBA

Krishna Upadhya, MD

Our Mission:

The Chesapeake Regional Chapter of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine serves the Washington, D.C, Maryland, and northern Virginia area. Our members come from a variety of medical and non-medical disciplines including physicians, nurse practitioners, psychologists, social workers, health educators, and other health professionals. We are committed to improving the physical and psychosocial health and well-being of all adolescents through advocacy, clinical care, health promotion, health service delivery, professional development, and research.

Our Objectives:

Promoting positive youth development, illness prevention, achievement of individual potential and a sense of physical, mental, and social well-being.
Pursuing optimal adolescent health and developmentally-appropriate health care, thru scientific research which provides the evidence base for effective health promotion as well as prevention and treatment of illness and injury
Promoting respect for individual dignity, equity, and justice, and recognition that age-appropriate, developmentally-sensitive health care is a right and not a privilege
Advancing adolescent health by increasing awareness of the health needs of adolescents and young adults through effective advocacy, communication and dissemination of knowledge.
Recognizing that advancing adolescent health depends upon effective partnerships among adolescents, families, health professionals, public and private sectors, communities, schools, and other social institution

Highlights of Recent Chapter Activities:

For our 2012 spring meeting, Mark Delmonte, Director, AAP Department of Federal Affairs, provided a timely update on Federal Legislative Changes as they relate to adolescent health. Mr. Delmonte’s presentation was followed by the 2012 Rixse Lecturer, Dr. John Santelli. Dr. John Santelli, President, SAHM, Harriet and Robert H. Heilbrunn Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health and Clinical Pediatrics, Chairman of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University spoke about “Abstinence, Education, and Incidence: HIV Risk in Rural Uganda.” Dr. Santelli was in town to present the 2012 Rixse Lecture at Children’s National Medical Center the next day.
For our fall 2011 meeting we met a new location St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore where we were joined by Dr. David Bell who spoke about HPV vaccination in the adolescent male population. We also presented our 2012 Regional Sunita Saxena Award to Kay Schoo, RN. Kay started at the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) 36 years ago as the only nurse at the Waxter Children’s Center. Her operating budget initially was a meager $1500 per year yet somehow even with these extremely limited resources, she made sure that every youth received the care that was needed. Kay managed the care for the first HIV positive youth in the history of DJS and established the strong bond that still exists between the University of Maryland Adolescent Clinic and DJS. Kay is now the Director of Nursing for DJS and its 14 facilities. She supervises 53 DJS nurses and manages the nurse agency contract that provides additional nurses to the Department. She single handedly wrote the DJS Health Care Standards and Operational Procedures in order to ensure quality and consistent care to youth across all the facilities.
Jeff Hutchinson, MD from Walter Reed has created our Chesapeake SAHM Facebook page — Like us if you are a member!