Minnesota Community Care (MCC) provides affordable to free of charge healthcare services to communities within the Twin Cities across multiple locations. There are many divisions within the MCC umbrella such as the HealthStart Clinic and SoLaHmo Partnerships. The HealthStart Clinics are clinics they have set up at various Saint Paul Public schools to provide comprehensive medical services to public school students at no charge to them. MCC provides a broad range of services from medical to dental to all people regardless of income, insurance, or immigration status. This work is done through the Bonner Community Scholars Program at Macalester College.

On a day to day basis, I help in administrative and health education tasks for the clinic. I conduct research and create informative material about relevant topics as supplements to our health curriculum. I also conduct classroom outreach and health education relating to risk prevention and positive youth development.

In addition to my usual tasks, a long-term project that I have been working on is creating and facilitating a district-wide youth health advisory board for all the HealthStart Clinics across Saint Paul Public Schools. I helped coordinate youth board activities and meetings, making sure that students know where and when to show up. We envisioned having a group of high school students, one to two representatives from each high school, to act as a body for clinic staff members to be in conversation with and to help guide the work of the clinic. We were able to establish the board with five high schools starting in the February of 2020 before the pandemic abruptly halted all activities. The Youth Advisory Board was able to resume its activity again in October of 2020, though meetings were conducted virtually. The Youth Health Advisory Board serves as a body and space for representative students to voice their feedback about their respective clinics. We want to know how we are doing as a clinic, what problems students are facing in accessing the clinics' resources, and how we are able to better serve students. It is a way for clinic staff to identify problems that might go unnoticed, but are apparent among the student body. One example is that students talked about how shameful it can be to visit the clinics because of the stigma surrounding sex and the thought that students only go there to get free condoms and contraceptives, which can be true. Through students’ direct input and participation, we were able to come up with a few campaign ideas to raise awareness about the many resources that the clinics provide aside from contraceptives, such as nutrition planning and therapy while addressing some of the hesitancy that students might have in interacting with the clinic. Community participation in healthcare and health education are ways that my project directly connects to public health.