Maryland Assembly on School Based Health Care’s 2017 Annual Conference, Building Linkages for Healthier Students, will be held on Thursday May 18th, 2017 at The Meeting House in Columbia, MD.

MASBHC is honored to welcome Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez, the founders of the Holistic Life Foundation as our keynote speakers for this year’s conference.

The Holistic Life Foundation (HLF) is a Baltimore-based nonprofit organization committed to nurturing the wellness of children and adults in underserved communities. Through a comprehensive approach which helps children develop their inner lives through yoga, mindfulness, and self-care HLF demonstrates deep commitment to learning, community, and stewardship of the environment. HLF is also committed to developing high-quality evidence based programs and curriculum to improve community well-being.

MASBHC’s 2017 Annual Conference will also feature twelve breakout sessions with topics on a variety of mental and somatic health topics as well as focused presentations on policy impact of SBHC’s

A few breakout sessions topics include

• Addressing Chronic Absenteeism in Baltimore through Linkages and Data
• School Based Oral Health: A toolbox for Prevention Strategies and Collaboration
• Improving communication with School Health Councils and Community Pediatricians
• Trauma Informed Care and Restorative Practices with Immigrant Youth Vulnerable to High Risk Behaviors
• Sudden Cardiac Death Among Student Athletes: A Game Changer in the Field of Pediatric Medicine

On Thursday January 26th from 1 to 2pm, please join us for our second installment of the MASBHC Webinars. This month’s webinar,  Mindfulness for Adolescents,  will focus on discussing mindfulness and how it benefits underserved and marginalized communities. Key takeaways for this webinar will include: the definition of mindfulness, its impact on adolescents, and tips and techniques for teaching and implementing mindfulness in schools.

 Click Here to Register!

Mindfulness for Adolescents is the second of three webinars that MASBHC will host as we lead up to our 2017 Annual Conference, Building Linkages for Healthier Students, to take place on Thursday, May 18th in Columbia, MD. MASBHC’s webinar series is also supported by the Maryland Adolescent Health Collaborative, a partnership between MASBHC and the Amerigroup Foundation.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email or call Yekatit Bezooayehu at [email protected] or 443.627.3424.

About the speaker…….

Tawanna Kane is a certified yoga teacher and MBSR instructor, who seeks to help individuals and communities, identify and cultivate their internal support systems and resilience. She has created stress reduction and mindfulness curricula for juvenile halls, level III schools and other specialized populations throughout the United States. Her passion is conceptualizing and implementing mindfulness interventions with underserved and marginalized communities. With over 15 years of experience teaching mindfulness, MBSR and yoga, she has served as director of The Lineage Project, The Joy Wellness Center at Shepherd’s Clinic and supervised mindfulness-based clinical trials at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution. By placing attention on the heart, she hopes to give people tools to be more present in their lives and with each other. Her relationship and love for children is informed by working for over 20 years in the areas of conflict resolution, peer mediation, theatrical expressions and youth development. Her work is synthesized in The Inner Resources Project, an emerging organization, which sets as its mission to help individuals and communities connect with their own humanity and to learn to be in relation to their community. Tawanna’s work has been featured in American Legacy Woman, Yoga Journal, Ascent Magazine and in several films, including The Fire of Yoga and the documentary, Yoga Comes to Brooklyn.