By Muntaha Rahman, Youth Advisory Council Member 2024- 2026
Throughout my childhood and early school years, my school-based health centers were crucial in providing my peers and I with necessary and fundamental access to a wide variety of health resources. For many students, these centers meant the world; although health care in other areas was not always guaranteed, they knew they would have something for them at their school-based health center.
My experiences navigating the school-based health system were a key realization for me later in life, when I decided I wanted to be a primary care physician serving underserved communities like my own. I joined SBHA as a Youth Advisory Council member in my freshman year of college out of this inspiration. I had seen firsthand the effects of SBHCs and wanted to be a pivotal force so other children and community members could have the same access to care as I had.
When I sat down to write this final reflection, I could still remember almost every single second of my first year and my first experiences at “Be the Change,” SBHA’s annual conference, in 2024. For me, this experience was the first setting I had seen that treated youth as true stakeholders who were actively engaged in the discussion and decision-making process instead of just being the topic of conversation. I had entered that conference week feeling incredibly nervous and apprehensive about not knowing anyone but left forming a wide net of friends and mentors. I returned to Michigan afterward feeling incredibly inspired; if this was my entry to SBHA, I couldn’t wait to see what the rest of my time as a YAC member would be like.
I’m glad to say that it only got better! My time on SBHA as a YAC member has been amazing and filled with a wide variety of experiences I would not have had otherwise. From its approaches in youth engagement to focus on healthcare accessibility to the amount of friends it gives you, SBHA has been more than worth it for me. Being in the YAC has given me a wide variety of professional opportunities, including presenting at conferences, networking with other organizations in the field, publishing articles in the Youth Health Hub, and more.
As I leave SBHA as a recent college graduate, I walk out not only knowing much more about the world of public health and the workings of school-based health, but with a deeper understanding of just how valuable and life-changing this work is. I’m very grateful for the experiences and work that I have done as a YAC member and could not have done this without my fellow members, SBHA staff, and other mentors. In the future, I hope to go into medical school and work at FQHCs and SBHCs as a pediatrician, and I have no doubt that the lessons I’ve learned from SBHA will stay with me forever.
