A mental health awareness campaign brought in some hefty hardware for a group of Allen Community College students.
Nursing students Alice Griffith, Kadence Gragg, Shania Charles and Piper Aronson took second in the nation for their mental health promotion project at an International HOSA leadership conference in Nashville.
The Allen quartet beat out such behemoths as Baylor University and the University of Texas at Austin to take second.
“The day we competed, I was really nervous,” Gragg told the Register. “I thought we did well, but it was very nerve-wracking to go up there on stage for the awards ceremony.
“But then we heard our name get called,” she said. “It went very well.”
The quartet spearheaded a number of projects dealing with mental health promotion for athletes during the 2024-25 school year.
On top of starting up an Instagram page — search “acc_mentalhealth” — the students also visited at length with Allen’s coaches, training staffers and athletes themselves to talk about their experiences and learn how they de-stress and cope with injuries and other struggles.
They also hosted activity nights, such as painting with puppies, and worked with mental health counselors at ACC and the Southeast Kansas Mental Health Center during their campaign,
The work netted the Allen group a gold medal at a state conference in the spring, qualifying them for the Nashville trip.
“There were a lot of students who helped us, and who were involved with what we were doing,” Gragg said.
“It was a neat experience for the kids,” team coach and co-sponsor Leslie Weir said. “It was tremendous just being a part of the atmosphere, seeing all those kids together, getting excited about health professions.”
ANOTHER student with local ties also competed at Nashville.
Halle Nelson, a Crest High graduate, took part in a job skills competition.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, Nelson will enroll in nursing classes at Allen in the fall, and will be a part of HOSA, a student organization for future health care workers.
She’ll join Griffith and Charles.
The plan is to continue promoting mental health, Weir said.
