Day 2 :
Keynote Forum
Dianne Maroney
The Imagine Project, Inc., USA
Keynote: Supporting and healing kids with stress and trauma
Time : 09:30 - 10:30
Biography:
Dianne Maroney is a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing. She is the founder of The Imagine Project, Inc., a nonprofit organization that helps kids and overcome challenging life circumstances through expressive writing. Dianne is an international speaker and author of several books including her most recent, The Imagine Project: Empowering Kids to Rise Above Drama, Trauma, and Stress (Yampa Valley Publishing, 2018). She is a thought leader in stress and trauma in children. Her simple, yet profound 7-step writing tool, now used by schools across the US, gives kids and teens the opportunity to rewrite a challenging personal story and Imagine new possibilities in its place.
Abstract:
Our children are stressed—more stressed than we realize. Research shows that kids are often more stressed than adults. Kids are also exposed to trauma. At least half of all children have experienced one or more traumatic experiences before the age of 17. Stress and trauma in children often cause difficulty concentrating, fears, aggression, lack of self-confidence, depression and a host of physical illnesses including lowering immune function and hormonal imbalances. Health care providers, teachers, parents, counselors, and all who care for children have a responsibility to assess, support, and help children heal from stress and trauma. Mindfulness, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT, also called Tapping), and expressive writing have been proven by research to support the processing and healing of children (and adults) who are or have experienced difficult life circumstances. Simple mindfulness techniques, 2-minutes tapping, and a standardized expressive writing technique called The Imagine Journal have measured increased GPA, decreased dropout rates, self-reported positive emotional health outcomes, physiologic changes such as positive cortisol shifts, and improved outcomes for health conditions. Such outcomes have rivaled the power of drug studies. Because these techniques are all simple and standardized, they can be incorporated into homes, schools, medical offices, and into an organization that supports the needs of children and a child can bring these techniques into their daily lives for social-emotional support.
Keynote Forum
Estela Cabrera Lunar
Universidad Anahuac Mexico, Mexico
Keynote: An innovative and supporting educational program for international hematopoietic cell transplant pediatric patients and siblings
Time : 11:00-12:00
Biography:
Estela Cabrera Lunar pioneer in the field of hospital education in Mexico since 2006, and is a hospital teacher in Hospital Angeles Lomas in Mexico. She is faculty professor in the Department of Education, at Universidad Anahuac México. Her contributions are innovative and a real breakthrough in hospital teaching in Spanish speaking countries. She has built educational bridges and collaboration partnerships between Mexico and the rest of the world in the health education field. Has attended and participated as speaker in several international conferences on healthcare and education.
Abstract:
Pediatric patients and their families navigate an uncertain journey when the treatment option is a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. The diagnosis and treatment bring an abrupt change disrupting family dynamics, and concerns that sometimes patients and siblings do not dare to ask. These concerns are of all kinds, especially social and emotional, and affect all family members. But, siblings are the most affected, being the ‘great forgotten members’ of the family, causing great conflicts in family dynamics, unbalancing the integral caring process. Latin American pediatric oncology has few didactic resources to support the disease process and help families navigate the journey alleviating their fears. The need to offer counseling and socioemotional support to the family, sick child and the siblings is paramount, to successfully reincorporate them into their daily lives without any gaps in education or socioemotional issues that could lead them to major behavioral problems in the short and medium term. The video resource Super Sam versus the marrow monsters made by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)/be the Match is an educational tool, shared with the network transplant centers to help them support their pediatric patients. Hospital Angeles Lomas in the State of Mexico member of the NMDP international network has adopted the resource with their pediatric audience, with very successful results, and somehow outside of the initial intended use of the animation video, to counsel siblings too.