The Brooklyn Latin School is the 2016 recipient of the Endometriosis Foundation of America’s (EFA) second annual ENPOWR Award for its commitment to prioritizing their student’s health through participation in the EFA’s adolescent education program, the ENPOWR Project.
“We are pleased to award to The Brooklyn Latin School the second annual ENPOWR Award. Their commitment to making sure that all their students understand the symptoms and health issues around endometriosis is an example for other schools. By helping students recognize signals from their own body, we can ensure early detection and treatment, which can make a tremendous difference in terms of a woman’s fertility, pain management, and disease progression. Killer cramps are not normal and we want every student in America to understand this and be able to get help,” EFA founder Tamer Seckin, M.D., said in a press release.
The award was presented to the Brooklyn Latin School during the EFA’s Awareness Day event on April 17, at the EFA’s Seventh Annual Medical Conference titled “Endometriosis Surgery 2016: Pursuing Precision with Passion.”
The international event gathered patients and families, educators, and healthcare professionals to discuss the challenges of endometriosis in an open forum, with patient and physician-led panels covering topics like early diagnosis, early intervention, sex, fertility, and pain management.
The ENPOWR (ENdometriosis: Promoting Outreach and Wide Recognition) Project is a one-of-its-kind school and community-led endometriosis education program. The unique program has educated 14,000 teens across New York State to raise awareness and promote treatment-seeking behavior among students in an interactive manner. Sessions finish with a call to action, where educators encourage students to “take the pledge” and share the information with as many people, friends, and family as possible to help spread awareness.
With a growing demand for endometriosis education, EFA recently developed a new pilot phase titled “the Endo EduKit” – a public health program that will deliver a highly replicable tool to the doorsteps of community volunteers and school staff, enabling teens to learn about endometriosis nationwide.
Endometriosis is a painful condition that happens when tissue that is normally found lining the uterus (called the endometrium) is found outside the uterus. This induces a chronic inflammatory reaction that might lead to permanent scar tissue. The lack of general awareness about the disease, and a culture that considers cramps as normal, usually results in a significant delay from when a woman first experiences the symptoms until she is actually diagnosed with the disease.