Helping Your College Student Stay Healthy

At College Parents of America, we are dedicated to finding and providing to you the very best medical information as it relates to preparing your teen for the college years.

In scouring the landscape on this topic, we became aware of some excellent work that was done by Dr. Lawrence Neinstein, a leading specialist in adolescent healthcare, under the auspices of the Society of Adolescent Medicine.

Neinstein urges that, no matter the age of your child, you start talking about health issues and "don't ever stop."

The issues to talk about include:

• Independence and confidentiality: the key points are to help facilitate your child's ability to function and make decision on his or her own, and to respect that, with adulthood, comes the right to confidentiality (from a legal perspective) over medical information.
• The necessity of a pre-college health exam: this ensures that all relevant medical information is up-to-date.
• Immunizations: an important, yet complicated, issue, this is an essential component of bringing information "up-to-date." Recommended vaccines pre-college include hepatitis A and B and meningococcal meningitis.
• Medical records and prescriptions: it is an excellent idea to have your primary-care physician send the campus health center a summary of your child's care, particularly if he or she has any type of chronic medical problems.
• First-aid supplies: Dr. Neinstein advises that one of the first questions your child will be asked if he or she calls a campus health center with an infection is: "Have you taken your temperature?" Don't let your child be embarrassed by the response: "I don't have a thermometer," or, even worse, "I don't know how to take my temperature." A basic health-care kit should take care of the above, as well as the inevitable scrapes and bruises.

Two more items that are important to have understandings with your children about - the details of your family's health insurance, and the times when it makes sense to visit a student health center versus a local hospital where, as you know, charges can sometimes rack up.