Sacramento State nursing students are volunteering their time this semester at the Wind Youth Center to help young adolescents who are homeless, struggling to finish school, or who do not feel safe in their own home.

The Wind Center is a nonprofit organization located in the Sacramento area. The center provides a place for adolescents to stay overnight, educational programs to finish high school and social work officials to find a place for these adolescents who range from 11 to 22.

Michelle Dang, community health nursing professor at Sac State, said she has always had a passion for working with adolescents and at-risk youth. While working with Elizabeth Miller, professor of Community at UC Davis, Dang came across an opportunity to work at the Wind Youth Center.

“The Wind Center is the only local center that I know of that works with youth who experience homelessness,” Dang said. “The Wind Center helps adolescentsadolescents find safety, guidance and access to resources to help them establish a health record so they can finish school and find jobs to live a successful life.”

After collaborating with partners, UC Davis Adolescent Medicine, FollowMe.com Foundation, and other partnerships, the Wind Youth Center has been able to create the program Healthshack; an online database that holds updated medical records of adolescents who do not have access to proper medical care.

With Dang’s strong desire to help youth, she began dedicating her spare time at the Wind Center and getting involved with the Healthshack program. The Healthshack program allows adolescents to enroll in an online system to help establish or find medical records so they can enroll in school and or find a job.

Eventually, Dang established the clinical placement that is now part of a course at Sac State for nursing students finishing their bachelor’s in nursing to not only service the Wind Center, but to gain personal learning skills and develop a leadership position.

“I think adolescents are fascinating and I believe there is a lot of hope for at-risk youth,” Dang said, “And while working at the Wind Center, I can still do the work I love, but also get my students to engage in their community and to get involved as well.”

During last semester, nursing students provided 90 hours of community service to the Wind Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays to provide a variety of health services to young adults who do not have access to health care resources. Some of the services the Sac State nurses provide include one-on-one counseling, health education classes and immunization shots.

Sac State’s nursing students work with youths to assess their circumstances, identify their needs and set goals. The students will also provide guidance, support and education to help youth gain the tools they need in order to change their lives.

“The Sac State nursing students provide many services for these adolescents,” Dang said. “They first sit down with the young adolescent and do a one-on-one counseling meeting where they establish a relationship of trust, which is what most of these teens are looking for.”

Although the Wind Center and the Sac State nursing students spend the majority of their time enrolling young adults in Healthshack, they also provide a relationship for adolescents that builds trust and makes the young adults feel welcome.

Vivek Anand, a young adolescent who came to the Wind Center for help three years ago and who is now part of the Wind Center as a Healthshack ambassador, said he was grateful for his experiences with the Wind Center and Sac State’s nursing students.

“The Wind Center really opens the door, regardless of your age,” Anand said. “It was a great feeling knowing someone else cared about my health. It was a great opportunity to seek counseling from the nurses. They were there every step of the way.”

Dang said it is important to keep agencies like the Wind Center going to guide adolescents to a better life when they grow up. However the recent cuts in public health funding have made it difficult for agencies like the Wind Center to continue to service these adolescents.

“I think it is important to strengthen these kinds of agencies, because if Wind is gone we really don’t have any of other agencies like Wind that will allow kids to just drop in,” Dang said. “Sacramento County has really cut back on their public health nursing services because of our budget situation. So I think more than ever, we need students to fill in those gaps and help our community who are in need of health care.”

Melissa Binger, a youth advocate and Healthshack project manager, said she believes the connection between the Sac State nursing students and the Wind Center is benefiting both the community and Sac State.

With the help of professor Dang, Binger said the linkage between the Wind Center and Sac State students will continue to provide young adults, like Anand, a place to go to where they feel they belong.

“Both the Sac State nursing students and Wind benefit from this relationship,” Binger said. “The nursing students are gaining experience while working with people, seeing firsthand the issues these people are going through and the barriers of health care.”

Yvette Villasenor can be reached at [email protected]