Student Assistance Program, clubs, host local vendors, agencies
By: Mary Wilson, Opinions Editor
On Sept. 4, the Student Assistance Program sponsored the Women’s Wellness Event on the Meramec campus.
The event, featuring input from the Circle of Life Club and Women’s Club, brought in representatives from area organizations, including the St. Louis County Department of Health, Barnes Jewish Hospital’s Women and Infants Center, Planned Parenthood, Thrive, YWCA and more.
“Our goal (at the Student Assistance Program) is to reduce barriers to student success. We do a variety of things to help students combat barriers,” said Shannon Nicholson, the coordinator for the Student Assistance Program. Some of those barriers students face include food insecurity, lack of safe housing, finding childcare, and crisis intervention.
“We have the on campus food pantry. We provide crisis intervention and safety planning,” Nicholson said.
“We work with students to find safe housing, help them with childcare resources. It’s very hard for a student to focus on learning if they are struggling to find food, if they’re struggling to pay for daycare, if they don’t have transportation. Our staff noticed that a lot of students were identifying concerns with healthcare, childcare, and access to those things, so we decided to bring in many different community agencies that can help with some of those pieces that are specifically around women but open to anyone.”
Nicholson said the goals of the event were “to raise awareness for community resources for students. We want to make sure that they know that both on campus with Student Assistance and off campus, there are options that want to help them be successful.”
The event, which took place in the Library Quad, had different agencies and organizations lined up at tables.
“We are here…because we feel that taking care of your sexual health is very important. A lot of people just worry about their general, overall health, but your sexual health can affect your overall health. So we’re out here today educating people on prevention, education, and how to prevent you from getting STDs, STIs, and HIV. So we have a lot of literature out here for women to pick up, because women, it’s very important that you take charge of your sexual health as well,” said Leigh Braxton of the St. Louis Effort for AIDS.
Caitlin Ashby of Barnes Jewish Hospital, said that “we (Barnes Jewish Hospital Women and Infants Center) are a full service obstetric and gynecological clinic. So for all those needs across the lifespan of women. If it’s UTI testing or treatment, yeast infections, pregnancy testing, Well Woman exams, Pap smears. Even if one gets pregnant, we have prenatal care.”
Ambrea Ball of Thrive Date Safe program, said, “We talk about healthy dating situations, how to prevent different things from happening, encouraging women and walking alongside them.”
Also in attendance was the St. Louis County Department of Public Health. “We have three locations in St. Louis County. One South County, two North County. We’re here today promoting women’s wellness services that we offer at those locations. (We offer) preventative care, contraceptive counseling, mammograms, birth control, minimal fertility services. (We offer) STI testing and treatment,” said Renee Durham of the St. Louis County Department of Public Health.
Students and community members alike do not need to have health insurance to come to these clinics. “We have Title X, (which) is a grant from the federal government, that covers a lot of expenses for birth control and contraceptives. And (we have) sliding fee scales services for those without insurance that qualify,” said Durham.
Emily Cabot of the Head Start division of YWCA, said that “part of my job is community outreach. We go out where we can find people for our programming. We provide affordable daycare and preschool to low income families. A lot of times parents, moms especially, are trying to go through school and they need childcare, so just trying to connect with people like that in the community.”
Planned Parenthood was also represented at the Women’s Wellness Event. “This is important because we at Planned Parenthood, a lot of the people we service are women. We do service men as well. But we are here to talk about Title X, and the Title X gag rule, and what it could do to people who are of lower socioeconomic standing,” said Willie Peete.
“Title X is a federal grant program that’s designated to make sure that these individuals are able to afford low to free healthcare. When it comes to other services such as birth control, contraceptives, STI and HIV testing. If you remove Title X, that means that patients who are of lower socio economic standing, they may not have a place to go and receive their services,” he said.
Broader needs were also addressed at the event. “We’re here to inform the campus community about the availability of mental health counseling on campus,” said Kathleen Swyers, a counselor at Meramec.
