Sending a child off to college is an emotional moment for almost every family. As parents drop them off, they are making sure they have their laptop, supplies, dorm furnishings, appropriate clothing and (admit it, kids) even a stuffy or two for emotional comfort.

One thing that should be on their list is making sure they have adequate insurance coverage and understand how the college’s student health system works if the need arises. And it will.  You may have students with medical issues that you know about, and this information will be helpful.

It’s estimated that about 20 percent of adolescents grapple with chronic conditions, the most common being diabetes, asthma, epilepsy and arthritis. In addition, mental stresses are very common. In 2021 the National College Health Assessment said that almost three-quarters of the students it surveyed reported moderate or severe psychological distress.

Then, of course, are the usual illnesses (colds, flu, COVID) and injuries. The chances are excellent that a student will have an encounter with student health services sometime in their first year.

Here are some of the ins and outs.

HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act – known far and wide as HIPAA – keeps a health care provider from sharing medical information with unauthorized persons, and this can include parents! Once a child is 18, they are considered an adult and in charge of their own health care.

If the student athlete is injured, the school doctor won’t talk to the parents unless the student has completed a HIPAA form giving them permission – even if they are the ones footing the bill.  Parents can download a generic HIPAA form from the state in which the child will be attending school and get it signed now. They don’t want to be dealing with this in an emergency.

Insurance

Under the Affordable Care Act, dependent children can stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, which is great. But not all health insurance plans are offered in every state, so parents will want to make sure that their child can use their insurance in the state where they’re attending school.

If they can’t, there are options, for example enrolling them in an insurance plan through the national Health Marketplace. For more information, visit healthcare.gov.

Another is to purchase insurance through the college. For example, let’s say your student is headed to the University of Michigan this fall. It offers a student health insurance in the Blue Cross/Blue Shield network. Last year, the 12-month premium was just under $2,300. Coverage includes primary care as well as behavioral health.

Prescriptions

The mail-order pharmacy they are already using can ship a student’s medications to where they are, but it’s important to impress upon them that they have to reliably and responsibly take the meds they’re prescribed. This is particularly important with chronic conditions.

One of the most common medications in this age group is Adderall for attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). Adderall is easily abused, and students have been known to share their meds, or even sell them, to fellow students.  Parents can’t control their every decision when they’re away at school, but this should be a topic of conversation over the summer.

Immunizations

Illinois state law requires college students to be immunized against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); meningitis; and tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis (Tdap). To that list, I would add vaccines for influenza, COVID, Hepatitis A and B, HPV (human papilloma virus) and chicken pox. Why potentially expose them to an illness when it can be avoided?

Do you need a patient advocate?

Everyone needs a patient advocate – someone in their corner who can ask questions, take notes and ensure the patient gets the attention they need. I think it unlikely that the typical 18- or 19-year-old experiencing a health crisis would have the maturity to advocate for themselves. Parents may not be there to give their student the personal attention they may need to understand their treatment, speak with medical staff and schedule tests and appointments.

A private patient advocate could fill the bill by being the parents’ eyes and ears, speaking knowledgeably with medical staff and providing meaningful communication back to the family.

I’m not suggesting that every college student needs a private patient advocate, just that it might be a consideration in some instances. There are several resources for finding a patient advocate in the area where your child is attending school: Greater National Advocates (GNAnow.org) and the National Association of Healthcare Advocacy (NAHAC.com) to name two.

An illness or injury can make the emotional rollercoaster of college even scarier. A little preparation makes a difference.

Teri Dreher, RN, is a patient advocate based in Chicago.  www.NorthshoreRN.com, NShore Patient Advocates.  You may email her at Teri@northshorern.com

A while ago, Marilyn O’Toole contacted me on behalf of IECA. She and organizational leadership were concerned—as almost all of my admissions, financial aid, enrollment management, and high school and independent counselors are—about underserved students getting support during the college admissions process. IECA was thinking about creating a video series to navigate the Common Application. She asked if I could help connect her with people who might be able to lend a hand.

I immediately thought of Oregon State’s Ecampus. If you know Ecampus, it’s a distinctive online platform at OSU for online education. It’s fairly old by online education standards: It was started here, it is run by OSU, the classes are taught by faculty, and it offers the same degrees students can get at our Corvallis and Cascades campuses. It’s not a bolt-on, for-profit module that we slap our name on. It’s us, and it’s run with great care, eschewing the “Zoom U” approach: A single class goes through a long process of instructional design to address modality differences and ensure outcomes that are the same as our in-person classes.

It seemed to me that we could take that approach to developing modules to help students navigate Common App. The data Common App provides suggests that their service is not being used by as many low-income, first-generation students (many of whom are students of color) as any of us would like. And some substantial percentage of students don’t use the account they create to apply to a single college. Some of this is understandable: They might apply only to a community college, or to a UC institution that doesn’t accept Common App. But counselors who work with students from well-educated, wealthier families all know that they too, get stuck in spots, and it’s logical to assume that unsupported students might just give up.

After a year of work, we launched the AXS Companion to Common App. It’s a video guide that breaks down CA into easily digestible chunks. I think it’s great, and I’m very proud of it. When we previewed it at NACAC, the counselors in the room were amazed. One said that the test score section video alone was worth its weight in gold.

The AXS Companion is modular, so students and parents can watch the whole thing, or just the section they need help with. It’s free. It requires no registration. And there is no tracking function on the site, so you don’t have to worry about your students being tracked or recruited because of their visits. And it can be shared with anyone.

Now, the sad part: Usage was not what we had expected or hoped for. Colleagues at other institutions said they could not send out anything with another university’s logo on it to their prospective students (branding is kept to an absolute minimum); some people—let’s be honest—don’t like the association with IECA. Professional associations—many of whom talk a good talk when it comes to increasing access—may tacitly support this, but won’t actively do so. Common App has told us that they have tried video and it didn’t work; and we’re kept from updating the AXS Companion until the 2024 app launches on August 1 and we see for ourselves what changes are made.

I hope we can do better. We should do better. It’s time to do better.

So, here’s what you can do:

• If you work at a college, send a link to your prospective students. Maybe you want to use Landscape data to find students who are more likely to be underserved.
• Repost this to other social media sites, like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Mastodon, Threads, and others. Tell others you believe in this, and ask them to share.
• Reach out to community-based organizations you work with, and let them know about this resource.
• Send it to parent groups at your local schools.
• Copy and send this message to your local ACAC or counseling email lists. Do it more than once.

We have big plans for this, including versions in Spanish, but our time and efforts are finite and we’ll have to make hard decisions if this doesn’t get more support.

Here is the link. Share widely and let us know what we can do better.

Thanks for reading this long message. It’s as important a post as I’ll make. Here is the link.

AXS Companion

Jon Boeckenstedt, is the Vice Provost of Enrollment Management at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Check out his blog at https://jonboeckenstedt.net/higher-ed-data-stories/