Our Story
We came together as a group at the very start of lockdown in March 2020. We shared stories; we cried; and we imagined what could be different. Talk of mental health came up again and again. The media was reporting about adolescents suffering alone in their bedrooms during the pandemic. We were some of those teenagers. But we believed that as youth, we were not only victims of COVID-19; we could be changemakers. We could change how schools like ours addressed mental health.
We launched a campaign (video linked) at our pilot school, Boston Latin Academy (BLA). A year later, we achieved a historic win. We convinced a supermajority of teachers at BLA to pass a historic proposal to put health first in the school schedule. As of fall 2021, everyone at BLA now has access to what we call “wellness block:” a robust set of one- to-one and group programming for 1700+ students and 100+ staff twice a week, every week, for the entirety of the school year. Teachers at the school have called this the most significant change at Boston Latin Academy in the past half-century.
In our second year, we are undergoing a strategic planning process to ensure the continued success and implementation of the work that we have done at Boston Latin Academy, and to experiment with approaches of how to scale up our impact across BIPOC student communities in Boston.
Funders/Partners
Contact Us
To get in contact with Health Comes First, please email: healthcomesfirstboston@gmail.com
Website created by Liz Bishop
Health Comes First 