Community Outreach

Ridge HOSA - Committed to Service

One of the core missions of Fossil Ridge HOSA is to serve the community through raising awareness about various healthcare-related issues, as well as raising funds and providing hands-on help to causes and organizations important for the development of the community.

Educational Outreach

National Alliance on Mental Illness & Teen Dating Violence Awareness Campaigns

The best way to have an impact on the community is by attempting to modify most people’s, if not everyone’s, mind and heart for the better. Therefore, our HOSA chapter takes immense pride in executing its awareness campaigns in an attempt to touch the souls of our community and to encourage them to help and provide financial aid for those in need. An important characteristic of students who decide to pursue health care occupations is that they must be selfless, unconditionally, toward others. As high school students, the best way to easily perform a selfless act for our community is by donating to organizations such as NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and to facilities that shield us from Teen Dating Violence. Currently, America is home to more than 200 mental illnesses, ranging widely across the mental illness spectrum, unfortunately resulting in one out of every five people being diagnosed as mentally ill. Knowing that our school harbors an amazing program for students that are mentally challenged, our HOSA chapter decided to choose NAMI as one of our many awareness campaigns. All four class levels in our high school’s HOSA chapter competed to raise the most money for their corresponding classes, and as a result we were able to raise an exceptional amount of money for NAMI in hopes of making an impact in our community. Furthermore, another campaign we choose to raise awareness for was Teen Dating Violence, a topic that remains under the shadows as multiple students suffer through it silently. Once our chapter came across the reality that millions of America’s high school students are being tortured physically, emotionally, or mentally, we decided to take an action against this sensitive topic. While preparing pamphlets, posters, and visual displays on the excruciating statistics regarding teen dating violence, our chapter attempted to encourage those suffering, along with those imposing, violence in their relationships to seek help. Ultimately, the measures our HOSA chapter takes to prevent further violence on teens and to raise financial aid for those suffering mental illness is extremely appreciated by our high school faculty, eventually encouraging our future generations of HOSA to continue making a positive impact on their communities.

Educational Outreach

HOSA Week Awareness Campaigns

To spread awareness about a variety of health related issues throughout the school, our HOSA chapter organized a HOSA week at our school. Throughout the week, we designated days for hunger awareness, mental health awareness, smoking and vaping awareness, and health education awareness etc. For each awareness day, we made sure to hand out flyers during lunches explaining why each issue is important and what students can do to help each cause. Doing so helped many students understand more about the issues their peers or others their age might be facing, letting them be more understanding and knowledgeable about the issues. Especially with smoking and vaping awareness, many students were able to grasp the depth of this issue as many often see vaping as having no repercussions. Mental health awareness was also very effective as we were able to convey the frequency of people being affected by it, letting the students know that it's nothing to be ashamed about and helping them understand how to help those affected by it. During HOSA week, we also made announcements about each awareness day and a small but important fact about it in order to convey the message of the awareness in a short but meaningful manner. These small facts had more effect on the students as they caught their attention more. As part of the awareness, we also designated a color for each day based on what issue we discussed. This allowed the students to be more involved as they learned about each issue. Although the HOSA week didn’t have any sudden visible changes on the student body, each day helped them learn a little more about a certain prominent issue which will help them understand issues their peers might be facing and know how to handle it.