Community Corner
Lets Take a Stand! School Access to Emergency Epinephrine School Board Meeting 6:30 PM tonight
Currently in Palo Alto Schools, only children who have a known serious allergic reaction have access to their own EpiPen which is kept at school. However, a staggering 25% of these life threatening anaphylactic reactions occur in children previously undiagnosed with a food allergy.
In the case your child has a serious allergic reaction, the staff would have to be breaking the law in order to give your child someone else's EpiPen in order to possibly save their life. In Virginia, a young girl died because the school nurse did not break the law.
President Obama has recently signed legislation urging Schools to stock EpiPens, so that it would be available to any child in the case of an emergency.
Staff at Palo Alto Schools have all been trained to use EpiPens. It is now a matter of policy for them to make available EpiPens for any student who may need it.
I hope you will join myself Dr. Angela Wong (Family Medicine at PAMF) as well as Dr. Kari Nadeau and Dr. Henri from Stanford at the Palo Alto School Board Meeting tomorrow night in support of Emergency Epinephrine for Palo Alto schools.
We have over 200 signatures from Stanford, Lucille Packard Children's Hospital and Palo Alto Medical Foundation in support of this initiative.
In order for change to happen the school board must hear our voice. Speaking at the school board meeting is the most effective method but if you can't make it please send an email TONIGHT to Board@pausd.org. If you are willing to come to the meeting but do not feel comfortable speaking, simply standing behind me when I speak will be powerful too.
If you are willing to speak but have no idea what a school board meeting is like or what you would do here is how it goes. Arrive at 25 Churchill (District offices) at 6:30. When you turn from Churchill into the parking lot stay to the right of the building and drive all the way to the back of the parking lot towards the Paly tennis court. The meeting takes place in the farthest back room attached to the main building (not portable) so you can open one of the back doors and enter from the back. Inside on the left will be some long tables and this is where you find a white card..fill out your name say your topic is "EpiPen" and write that you are there for open comment. Hand your card to a person sitting next to that table. When open comment happens they will call the names on the cards one by one. When your name is called you stand at the podium and speak. It can be quick or you can use your full time allotment. Each person is given between 2 - 3 minutes depending on the night. After speaking just sit back down in your seat or simply go home. Because this is open comment it is unlikely that the board will discuss this topic that night since it isn't an agenda item. The hope is that the topic will be put on the official Agenda for the next meeting. Hopefully open comment will happen between 6:45-7:00 but please plan to stay later because it can be later than that.
I hope to see a crowd of people tomorrow night in support of this!
If you know anyone at other Palo Alto Schools, or have access to their email distribution lists, please forward this email.
Angela Wong, MD