Kentucky Coalition For Healthy Children Newsletter

Issue 32 | January 2025

Working collaboratively on policies and practices in and around schools that promote equity and improve the physical, social, and emotional health and well-being of children, youth, and families.

The opinions and viewpoints expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the positions of all coalition partners.

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KCHC Member Highlights

2025 Legislative Session│ Healthy Kentucky Policy Priorities

The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, the backbone organization for the Kentucky Coalition for Healthy Children, has released its 2025 Kentucky General Assembly Healthy Kentucky Policy Priorities. The Foundation has developed a list of the policies it supports in the areas of Access to Health Care, Children’s Health, and Social Determinants of Health. It also outlines policies the Foundation opposes in those areas. Link to the policy priorities here.

Policy Priorities │ Kentucky Youth Advocates

Kentucky Youth Advocates (KYA) has released their 2025 policy priorities for the upcoming legislative session. The priorities focus on a wide range of topics, from ones aimed at expanding access to safe, equitable prenatal and delivery care to others aimed at protecting youth from the harmful effects of vaping, sexual abuse, exploitation and more.

Virtual Continuing Education Event│ Effective Advocacy

The Kentucky Psychological Association is holding a virtual event Effective Advocacy: Making Every Voice Count on January 13, 11:00 to 2:00 p.m. ET. The even offers information on the legislative process - state and local - and ways to make policy change happen through advocacy. Presenters are Dr. Sheila Schuster, Executive Director of the Advocacy Action Network, and Emily Beauregard, Executive Director of Kentucky Voices for Health. Registration here.

Lunch & Learn│ Speaking Up for Kids in the 2025 Legislative Session

Join Kentucky Youth Advocates on January 15, 12:00 for a virtual webinar on advocacy resources, tips for contacting legislators, updates on the 2025 state legislative session and the Blueprint for Kentucky’s Children policy priorities, and more. Registration here.

Events | Thrive KY Policy & Advocacy Updates

The ThriveKY coalition is holding its state and federal policy update on January 27, 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. ET. These webinars cover various topics, including the economy, behavioral health and Medicaid, food and housing updates. Register here.

Conference│ Networking for Kentucky’s Youth

The 2025 Kentucky Youth Tobacco Control Conference at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in Frankfort, KY, on February 5th, will unite high-school-age youth advocacy coalitions/groups from across the state. This youth-led event will be an engaging day of learning, skill-building, networking, and fun! The expected goal is that conference attendees will leave better educated, and further empowered, to protect their peers, schools, and communities from the harmful effects of tobacco/nicotine and vaping.

Registration is now open! Secure your spot today and join us in saying “Challenge Accepted” to Big Tobacco. Click here to register now!

Advocacy Day │ Youth Advisory Board

On February 6, 2025, #iCANendthetrend is holding the Youth Advisory Board Advocacy Day, “Wash Away Nicotine: Enforce Tobacco 21”. The event will begin at 7:30 a.m. EST at 700 Capitol Avenue in Frankfort. Youth will meet with legislators and network with other students from across Kentucky.

Related to youth engagement in advocacy, there is a seven-week course being offered, Social Justice Approaches to Youth Engagement, which contains a mix of critical reflection, skill-building, applied practice, and tools and resources that will enable participants to be an advocate for youth. The registration for the course is January 10 and the Course begins on January 27, 2025.

Summit | Bloom Summit: Together We Bloom

This event is being held on May 7, 2025, in Shelbyville, KY. It will focus on cultivating positive childhood experiences through both policy and systems change across the Commonwealth, offering a unique platform to explore new strategies for fostering resilience and mitigating adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in Kentucky's children. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with thought leaders, gain insights into the latest research, and network with peers committed to building a brighter future for Kentucky's youth.

You can register for the event or fill out an exhibitor application. Learn more here.

Video│ Kentucky Voices for Health Highlight Mission

Kentucky Voices for Health (KVH), an Executive Partner of the Kentucky Coalition for Healthy Children, has launched its 2024 Highlight Video. The video presents the work KVH is carrying out to amplify the voices of Kentuckians with direct, lived experience in whatever issues the commonwealth faces. Their work includes a combination of outreach, education, and advocacy efforts to make sure Kentuckians are informed and empowered when it comes to the decisions directly impacting them.

Free Trainings | Bounce Coalition

Bounce is extending its offer for free trauma-informed trainings (with technical assistance and evaluation) to schools, school districts, public health departments, and public early childhood education programs through August 2025! Reach out today to schedule a training through this form.

Survey │ Advocate Engagement Survey

Kentucky Voices for Health has developed a survey to better understand who wants to participate in their new advocate network and how they want to be involved. The survey will serve to inform people about their activities and increase information around what issues people are seeing locally and how you and KVH can help.

What's New in Children's Health

How Environments Impact Children’s Health

Science around early childhood development is providing increasingly clear evidence that, beginning before birth, the places and conditions where children live, grow and learn shape how children develop, which in turn shapes their lifelong physical and mental health. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University released In Brief: Place Matters The Environment We Create Shapes the Foundations of Healthy Development.

The brief examines how built and natural environments shape development and lifelong health, while also highlighting the role that current and historic public policies have played, along with systemic racism, in creating a landscape where levels of exposure to risk and access to opportunity are not distributed equally.

Growing Knowledge and Awareness of Social Media and its Impact on Youth

The United States Surgeon General has issued warnings and recommendations related to social media use by youth. There is growing interest in the topic and because of the hypersensitivity to social feedback starting at ages 10-13 until approximately the mid-twenties, as studied in youth’s brain development, there is also more knowledge and awareness of the stronger impact of social media on youth of these ages. The American Psychological Association has therefore developed Potential risks of content, features, and functions: The science of how social media affects youth, which provides a resources and guides for parents to help reduce the harm, while keeping the benefits, of social media use by children and youth.

Family, Friend, and Neighbor Childcare

The Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development has released a new report, What’s Working: A Study of the Intersection of Family, Friend, and Neighbor Networks and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation. The report aims to understand more about the Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) child care landscape to help determine which services and supports, and in particular mental health related services and supports, are most requested and needed by FFN childcare providers.

In Your Community

The Kentucky Farm to School Network Growing Strong

The Kentucky Farm to School Network (KYF2S) is a coalition of organizations and advocates working to cultivate farm to school initiatives that:

Create and support opportunities for all Kentucky students to grow, learn about, and choose locally grown foods.
Increase participation of Kentucky farms in farm to school activities.
Expand the capacity of Kentucky schools to participate in farm to school.

2024 has been a year full of successes and growth for the network. October 2024 was KYF2S’s fourth year of running the Kentucky Farm to School Challenge during National Farm to School Month. This year, 10,636 students completed the challenge in 55 classrooms and/or schools.

In this fourth year of the challenge, students across the commonwealth visited farms and orchards and hosted county Extension Agents, Food Service Directors, FFA members, and farmers in their classrooms. Students sowed seeds to be planted in their school gardens as well as indoor hydroponic systems in their classrooms.

On December 4, 2024, over 100 participants registered for the Kentucky Farm to School Summit, an event to bring together school food professionals, farmers, classroom educators and a whole host of community partners to share successes in farm to school and to do some problem solving and brainstorming related to some of the challenges in farm to school. The summit had 19 sessions and attendees left saying they had new ideas and had made valuable connections.

One outcome of the summit is the drafting of a Toolkit for Community Partners to support farm to school activities. The toolkit will contain tips on best practices for working with schools, from the cafeteria to the classroom. There will be highlights of the resources that different community partners bring to the table.

TAKE ACTION!

With a new administration at the federal level as well as changes at the state legislature, there will be many opportunities for advocacy action. The 2025 Regular Session for the Kentucky Legislature is as follows:

Part I shall convene on Tuesday, January 7, 2025.
Part II convenes on Tuesday, February, 4.
The last day for introduction of new Senate bills is Tuesday, February 18.
The last day for introduction of new House bills is Wednesday, February 19.
The concurrence days are Thursday and Friday, March 13 and 14.
The veto recess is March 15 to March 26; and
The 29th and 30th legislative days are Thursday and Friday, March 27 and 28.

This calendar may be amended during the session upon agreement of the Senate and House Leadership.

Don’t forget that KET livestreams all chamber proceedings and many committee meetings. The Legislative Research Committee ( LRC) provides full coverage of all committee meetings on YouTube. For links to the livestreams, go to: https://legislature.ky.gov/Public%20Services/PIO/Pages/Live-Streams.aspx.

To start preparing for advocacy action:

Identify who represents you in Frankfort and, when the time comes, advocate by writing or calling your legislator: Find Your Legislator
The KCHC will send out its policy priorities and when the session starts, you can track the progress of bills with an impact on children’s health here.