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Health & Fitness

BLOG: Start School Later Goes to Washington (Again)

Locally-based grassroots coalition is meeting with a federal agency tomorrow to get the issue of later high school start times on the national mental health & suicide prevention agenda.

The national grassroots coalition for healthier school start times - kicked off by a petition publicized in the SevernaParkPatch - is meeting with Dr. Anne Mathews-Younes, Director of the Division of Prevention, Traumatic Stress and Special Programs, and Dr. Richard McKeon, Director of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency of the US Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Wednesday, July 18, in Rockville, MD. 

We'll be discussing ways federal agencies might help raise awareness and facilitate policies and programs to ensure safe, healthy school hours for all children. This goal has been impossible to achieve in many local school systems, including ours, where politics and myth usually trump student health and well-being. Our goal is to get the issue of school start times and teen sleep deprivation onto the agency's radar screen.

Compelling scientific research shows that adolescents’ sleep needs are being dangerously compromised by the extremely early school schedules of many US high schools - including the 7:17 a.m. bell time facing AACPS teens since the 1980s. Waking at 5:30 to catch a bus and begin class in the 7 o’clock hour is incompatible with documented sleep needs and causes teens to miss out on the crucial sleep required for physical and mental health and development, as well as optimum academic achievement. Sleep deprivation is strongly linked to anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation, among other health effects.

SAMHSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which, in turn, is increasingly recognizing the importance sleep plays in the health and wellness of young people.

Start School Later members attending the SAMHSA meeting include myself and former Severna Park education activist Debbie Coleman, MBA, who is is driving in for the meeting from Ohio where she is a faculty member at Miami University. We'll be joined by Heather Macintosh and Kari Oakes, PA of Annapolis, and Terry Cralle, RN, a sleep nurse from Keswick, VA. 

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