When Proctor’s Board of Trustees and school leadership identified the renovation of the Health and Well-Being Center as the School’s next priority, the opportunity for a coordinated leadership in student health and well-being emerged. Through the support of a generous donor, the role of Chief Medical Officer became a reality. Proctor is thrilled to welcome Dr. Nancy Turkington to the community in this new role. As Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Turkington is charged with oversight of all health and well-being-related operations for the student population at Proctor, including supervision of the Health Services, Mental Health Counseling, and all student wellness services and programming, while providing strategic direction to the development of comprehensive student health and well-being programming and support.
Dr. Turkington shared her thoughts on the unique opportunity at Proctor to build a high impact student health and well-being program that transforms lives and teaches students how to thrive at Proctor and beyond.
Can you share a little about your clinical/professional experience over the last three decades and how that experience led you to this role at Proctor?
I have spent the last 25 years as medical director of a pediatric practice in the Upper Valley Region of Vermont and New Hampshire caring for children from birth through early adulthood. I have decades of experience caring for adolescents and the health conditions particular to their age group, such as athletic injuries, reproductive health, substance use and other risk taking behavior. A great deal of my work has focused on the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders. Over the last decade, I have witnessed firsthand the escalating levels of stress among young people. This stress has created a crisis among the teens and young adults in our country. I have worked with local schools and community providers to create multi-specialty care teams to treat children with eating disorders, affect disorders, substance use and learning challenges. These experiences have led me to believe that those of us with long-standing clinical experience must begin to shift our focus beyond individual patient care and toward prevention at the larger population level.
What do you see as the biggest challenges facing adolescents today related to their health and well-being?
Access to the internet, and social media in particular, is by far the biggest stressor for our children. They are alone out there in the digital world. We, as adults, do not really know what they are experiencing, and it is imperative that we protect them from the trauma happening right in our own living rooms. Additionally, in part due to the polarization of social media and the online world, there are so few role models from whom our kids can learn how to listen to each other, respect each other, understand alternative view points, and work across differences. The targeting of our children by radical groups on the internet and corporate industries seems to be at a historically critical point. The cosmetic and tobacco industries, for example, market their products to younger and younger age groups. Climate anxiety is another concern shouldered by this generation who is not yet in a position to make change. This leads to feelings of helplessness, while pornography is available at their fingertips. All of these factors impact how they interact with each other and with the world around them. It is undoubtedly a complicated world for our kids where there is not a lot in place to protect our children from this type of exploitation, and so the education of young people is absolutely critical to their well-being.
What do you see as the greatest opportunities at Proctor (as a boarding school) to positively impact adolescents' lives?
Diving into this health and well-being work at Proctor is a landmark project. Proctor Academy, as an independent, residential school, offers a unique environment in which to evaluate the mental health of a population and determine the support teenagers need to build the resilience and skills to cope with the challenges they face today and will face in their futures.
A boarding school provides the opportunity to have all of the professionals who work with adolescents in one community. Educators, health professionals, psychologists, coaches, dorm parents are all available to collaboratively initiate evidence-based interventions and determine if they help. It also provides the opportunity to control variables, making it easier to make changes and study outcomes. For instance, in a boarding school the students have the same access to important health determinants such as healthy food, opportunities to engage in physical fitness and social activities, and the same professional support. This allows us to make a change in one determinant and keep the others stable. And perhaps most importantly, Proctor has the resources to do this work well.
In a time of challenging school funding around the country, Proctor’s leadership and parents are so excited and determined to improve the well-being of the student body and have provided an incredible opportunity to make positive change in the lives of these adolescents. The investment in this work will not only serve Proctor’s students and families, but we will have an opportunity to share our work with other populations of teens around the state and country, in hopes of helping turn the tides in how we are supporting, challenging, teaching, and guiding adolescents through life.
What about Proctor excites you most as you think about this role and the work you are stepping into?
I am overwhelmed by the dedication, determination and enthusiasm that the Proctor Community has to address the mental health crisis affecting adolescents across the country, including those students we serve at Proctor. Everyone I have met from the dining services team, the athletic trainers and athletic department, the health care staff, counselors, teachers, Deans all the way up to the head of school and administration, are all excited about the health and well-being initiative that is unfolding. Their excitement is contagious and I can’t wait to get started!
This role is about addressing an immediate need, but has long term applications as well. In the midst of a crisis, to study what is happening and then immediately work on it, to identify potential solutions, test them, and then continue to evolve our practices is a gift to the students and adults within the Proctor community, and hopefully our work will positively impact other school communities. That is why this opportunity is so exciting. I was certainly helping individual people in my pediatric practice, but it didn’t feel like I was helping enough. It felt like there needed to be a larger response and I needed to be a part of it, and to not do it alone.
To a Proctor Parent or Teacher, how would you describe your role of Chief Medical Officer at Proctor?
My role as Chief Medical Officer is to work with the very dedicated health care team here at Proctor to optimize the health and well-being of the Proctor community. I hope to first spend time understanding the systems currently in place and the culture of health at Proctor. I plan to work with all of the players who are involved in the health care systems to improve those systems using a date-driven approach, and to then extend beyond the health care providers to other engage with students and faculty to understand how wellbeing intersects with all areas of life on campus. I practice system-based and evidence-based medicine, so together we will determine if change is necessary, make changes that are scientifically supported, and study the results of the changes to determine if they actually improved the quality of care we provide and optimize patient outcomes. I also see my role as medical director as helping all of the members of the health care team grow professionally and achieve their career aspirations.
Over the past few years, I have noticed an increase in stress among adolescents that appears as mental illness. This role and the work we will engage in together as a community will dive into what those stresses are for our kids? How do we provide our children with the tools needed to address these challenges? How do we help young people find success and find wellness in their lives? This role at Proctor will allow me to take what I have learned from my pediatric practice over the last twenty-five years and apply it within a remarkable community of educators, students, and families. Just as Proctor’s Learning Skills Program took a challenge (traditional “school” not serving diverse learners well), identified a model that optimized student growth, and built on that model over years, we want to take the same approach around student health and well-being. We believe there is a need, and an opportunity, to lead in this way.
Learn more about student health and well-being at Proctor here!
- Faculty/Staff
- Health and Well-Being
- Strategic Planning