One of Kate Wallace’s proudest accomplishments on the Santa Rosa Medical Center’s Teen Advisory Council was a no-brainer from the perspective of a young person seeking medical care.
She helped other teens establish a separate waiting room in the Pediatrics Department to fill out physician questionnaires — away from the prying eyes of their parents. The teens spoke, and the hospital listened.
“The room is specifically for teens with posters offering health resources,” said Wallace, who joined the 19-member council as a shy ninth grader. She is now in her first semester at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “They can fill out their paperwork without a biased response, without their parents nearby.”
The teen council, which recently celebrated 20 years at the medical center, was the first of its kind in Kaiser Permanente Northern California.
“Being on the council has definitely helped solidify my love and passion for the medical field,” said Wallace. “And it definitely helped with my college applications.”
The experience also transformed a person who was terrified of speaking in front of others to one who reveled in the professional development the council offered, pushing her to build communication skills and gain real-world experience she never could have imagined learning at 14.
Mandy Weltman, supervisor of the Person and Family Centered Care Program at Santa Rosa Medical Center, said the teen council was started out of a realization that feedback is important.
We don’t make big changes in our medical center or teen care without getting the perspective of our patient partners. They help us do what we do better. — Mandy Weltman, Person and Family Centered Care Program supervisor.
“We would regularly create new patient care protocols and then get all this feedback, and not all of it was positive,” said Weltman. “We assumed we knew best how to care for teens, but when we created the council, we had an awakening. Ever since then, we don’t make big changes in our medical center or teen care without getting the perspective of our patient partners. They help us do what we do better.”
The medical center has several other patient advisory councils for different groups, such as the Consejo Latino for Hispanic members. Across Kaiser Permanente in Northern California there are 41 patient advisory councils, including 3 for teens, and others representing people with autism spectrum disorders, cancer, and diabetes.
Tara Sullivan joined the advisory council in 2016 when she was 16 and was proud to raise awareness of mental health challenges she saw among her peers. She has since graduated from Stanford University with a degree in psychology focusing on health care advocacy. And she recently finished her first year in a doctoral program in clinical psychology at the University of Maryland in College Park.
“I could see there were issues coming up in my high school community around mental health,” she said. “I saw this burden of anxiety and depression my peers were facing and my own experiences with it as a teen.”
The council allowed her to represent the interests of other Santa Rosa teens who felt they had little control over their place in the health care system.
As the council celebrates its 20th anniversary, its impact on its alumni is clear.
“I can’t speak highly enough about my experience,” Sullivan added. “Just the opportunity to have a touch point in making change was powerful by itself. There’s not a lot of opportunities for teens to have their stories acknowledged and heard, to promote better overall health for our communities.”
