Several members of a Windsor High School student group have experience with what life is like when a young family member is admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit with serious health issues. One student’s experience was first-hand — she was that family member.
Inspired by those experiences, and familiar with the feelings of loneliness and detachment that often come with, that group recently started a project aimed at lending a helping hand to NICU patients and their families while also reminding them they are not alone.
NICU Heroes is the ongoing, long-term vision of the Windsor chapter of the Family Career and Community Leaders of America, a career and technical education student group with about 17 members.
FCCLA members are enrolled in classes including child development, interior design, fashion design and Family and Consumer Sciences Leadership.
The Windsor FCCLA officers leading NICU Heroes are enrolled in an FCS Leadership class taught by Jessica Teal. They are overseeing a school and communitywide effort to support NICU families in at least one northern Colorado hospital, Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins.
Through NICU Heroes, the Windsor students are making 18- by 24-inch flannel blankets and assembling gift baskets of supplies for 30 babies and their families.
“There is feeling behind it,” said 17-year-old Windsor senior Shirley Winters, chapter vice president who dealt with serious medical issues as a result of being a premature infant. “You go through life, and you meet different people and you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s good that other people have gone through this, to understand the struggles. It’s not just giving baskets with supplies to help.”
NICU Heroes is primarily a service-based effort with the students taking an academic and practical approach to distributing their assistance. Teal, Windsor’s FCCLA advisor, said she wanted the students to understand how to familiarize themselves with an issue in their communities and share the problem and information surrounding it.
“They’re really trying to impact the community,” Teal said. “We’re striving to help them be design thinkers and how learning transcends beyond the classroom.”
The Windsor students started their work in September planning the project, though they had the idea prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their first step was to figure out why the project is important and what they wanted to achieve. In late October, the students interviewed Kim Geurin, a nurse manager at Poudre Valley Hospital.
Geurin gave the Windsor students advice and guidance on how they could support NICU families and babies.
“I think there is a large need,” for the Windsor project, Geurin said late last week. “We have a lot of families who have nothing and people who are coming from poverty, and it’s nice to give them a special blanket or supplies for moms.”
“I think the supplies make the family feel the support,” she added.
Geurin said the Poudre Valley NICU is now seeing a daily patient count in the mid-20s. The daily totals were under 20 a year to 18 months ago.
Colorado and Weld County both had a preterm birth rate of 9.1% in 2021, according to the March of Dimes report card. A preterm birth is defined as a live birth before 37 weeks gestation. The rate earned Colorado a B- grade. Among the 50 states, only Vermont — with a preterm birth rate of 7.6% — scored an A.
Founded in the late 1930s to fight polio, the organization evolved into the March of Dimes to advocate for the health of mothers and infants.
Geurin said it’s unusual for the hospital to hear from student groups that want to donate to NICU parents. The Poudre Valley NICU is a 32-bed Level IIIB facility, meaning it cares for infants born at 28 weeks and older.
“We get other agencies or foundations that want to donate,” Geurin said. “This is the first students approached me on what they can do.”
The students’ work on NICU Heroes will continue at least through the spring. They plan to enter their work in the FCCLA state conference April 14-16 in Denver with hopes of earning an opportunity to compete at the national conference later this year in San Diego.
The project is broadly based and requires the students to draw on real-world skills, including collaborating, writing, researching, interviewing, gathering data and keeping track of money. The FCCLA students distributed a survey to the 119 Windsor students in FCS classes to also understand and gauge the need for the blankets and baskets based on the impact of the NICU experience.
Teal said all 119 surveys were returned to the FCCLA leaders and a few themes emerged from the information. Those surveyed identified needs for emotional support, building connections to the NICU for families and dealing with the financial impact of costs starting at thousands of dollars and increasing.
The survey showed families’ stays lasted anywhere from a few days to months. Words often used to describe the experience were: scared, sad and stress.
Teal said seven students who returned the surveys said they’d be willing to speak with the FCCLA leaders about their experience or knowledge of a NICU, giving the NICU Heroes another avenue to gather data and perspective.
When it comes to acquiring the contents of the gift baskets, the FCCLA students hope to turn NICU Heroes into a schoolwide effort.
The project will be the source of a marketing campaign early next month to kick off a two-week drive to collect supplies such as onesies, stuffed animals, diapers, bottles, pacifiers and socks. Mike Vasa’s video production students are working on a video message with the FCCLA officers to drum up support for NICU Heroes.
Teal said the NICU Heroes video will be shown during students’ advisory classes, a required course for every Windsor student where they learn skills such as writing resumes and completing college applications.
“We want to involve the whole school,” Teal said.
Teal said the FCCLA students wrote a grant to find financial assistance for NICU Heroes, and OtterCares Foundation in Fort Collins responded with a $500 award. The money was divided between buying flannel for the blankets and supplies for the baskets.
The $250 for supplies won’t cover all 30 baskets, Teal said, leaving the students responsible for figuring out how to raise funds for the rest. Teal said the United Way of Weld County expressed an interest in donating diapers, and the students plan to participate in a March of Dimes walk-run in the spring with the OtterCares Foundation providing matching funds.
Teal, in her sixth year at Windsor High, said when she started with the FCCLA chapter, the students didn’t have or identify a passion-driven project to the degree Winters and the other officers have led NICU Heroes.
This is the first time the chapter has undertaken a big FCCLA project, she said.
“It’s a big shift for us in students taking the leadership of the FCCLA and taking it upon themselves,” Teal said. “I think it’s a new precedent the group is setting beyond the walls of the school and connecting to what we teach.”
The project was the collective idea and decision of four or five students in the Windsor chapter. Winters and the other young women, four of them officers, were motivated to take on NICU Heroes because of a familiarity with the circumstances facing families of premature infants.
Winters was born with a hole in her heart, and her lungs weren’t fully developed.
Junior Mackensey Gould, 17 and the Windsor FCCLA co-president, presented the NICU project idea to her fellow students. Gould’s younger brother was born at 25 weeks.
The average length of human gestation is about 40 weeks. A premature birth occurs before the start of the 37th week of pregnancy, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Gould’s brother, now 11, has “pretty normal” development, according to Mackensey, who is familiar with the financial toll on a family worrying about caring for a premature infant or a newborn needing extensive medical care.
Gould said her family incurred expenses in the millions.
“When you’re learning about it (what NICU families go through), you see it as a lesson,” Gould said. “But for people affected, it’s an all-life thing.”
Junior Lexi Johnson, the Windsor FCCLA secretary, has a cousin who was born premature with cystic fibrosis. Johnson said she’s aware of the challenges her aunt and uncle faced following their daughter’s birth.
“It made things more difficult, and the medical diagnosis was very complicated,” said Johnson, who is 16. “I think it’s a common issue that is overlooked.”
Neither Samantha Darnell nor Amber Shawver had the same personal connection to NICU infants as Johnson, Winters and Gould. But Darnell and Shawver were quickly intrigued by the project.
Darnell, a 16-year-old junior, is the Windsor FCCLA treasurer. Shawver, an 18-year-old senior, at one time considered a career as a NICU nurse. Though Shawver doesn’t see herself pursuing that career now, she’s still interested in working with infants.
“I love the cause of helping babies, and I can carry on what they’re starting,” she said.
Shawver learned to crochet during COVID, and she’s making baby blankets to donate to battered women in shelters.
“I’m finding another way to help,” she said.
