Kent School’s 2024 Kudner Leyon Visiting Writers are Cara Natterson, MD and Vanessa Kroll Bennett. Natterson and Bennett are the authors of This is so Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. The bestselling book is described as “Eye-opening and reassuring, This Is So Awkward will help adults understand the turbulent pubescent decade and become confident guides for today’s kids.” The author/experts will visit Kent School on Tuesday, October 15. There will be a student workshop during the academic day. Later that afternoon Natterson and Bennett will lead a parent meeting at Kent Cultural Alliance in Chestertown. The parent meeting begins at 4:00 p.m. and is open to the public. There is no fee to attend. The Bookplate will have books available for sale and signing.

The publisher’s website goes on to say, “Almost everything about puberty has changed since today’s adults went through it. It starts, on average, two years earlier and stretches through high school . . . and for some, beyond. Gens Z and Alpha are also contending with a whole host of thorny issues that parents didn’t experience in their own youth but nonetheless need to understand: everything from social media and easy-access pornography to gender identities and new or newly-potent drugs. Talking about any of this is like puberty itself: Awkward! But it’s also critical for the health, happiness, and safety of today’s kids.”

Dr. Cara Natterson, is a pediatrician and the author of the bestselling The Care and Keeping of You series, Guy Stuff and Decoding Boys. She is a graduate of Harvard College and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and is the founder of Order of Magnitude, a company dedicated to flipping puberty positive.

Vanessa Kroll Bennett is the founder of Dynamo Girl, a company focused on building kids’ self-esteem through sports, puberty education and parent workshops. She co-hosts The Puberty Podcast with Dr. Cara Natterson and writes the Uncertain Parenting Newsletter about the messy process of raising tweens and teens,

Previous Kent School Kudner Leyon Visiting Writer Lisa Damour, PhD author of Untangled, Under Pressure and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers said, “How are loving adults supposed to guide tweens and teens when everything – even puberty- has changed since their own Adolescence? Cara Natterson and Venessa Bennett have the answer! This is So Awkward is an accessible, enjoyable and detailed road map for addressing even the most delicate topics with confidence and compassion.”

Nancy Mugele, Head of Kent School said, “With gratitude to the support from our Kudner Leyon Memorial Endowment, I am really looking forward to welcoming Cara and Vanessa to Kent School. Their book is so relatable and I am confident that their presentation to our students will be equally so. I am truly proud that Kent School can bring a program of this caliber of excellence to our community and to the greater community of Chestertown. I hope to see you at the Kent Cultural Alliance on October 15 at 4:00 p.m.” For more information contact Kent School at410-778-4100 ext. 110 or email [email protected]

On Wednesday, October 9, Kent School will host the annual Secondary School Fair for students in Grades Six, Seven and Eight and their parents or guardians. Kent School’s Secondary School Fair is open to all families in the area and there is no fee to attend. The event will be held in the “Mike” Williams Gymnasium (or outside on our riverside field weather permitting) from 4:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. To date, twenty-five schools are registered to attend including several independent, parochial, and area public schools, both day and boarding schools. The confirmed attendees are: Blair Academy Cate School

Christchurch School Episcopal High School Foxcroft School

Grand River Academy Kent County High School Linden Hall School for Girls Mercersburg Academy Miller School of Albemarle Northfield Mount Hermon Oldfields School

Queen Anne’s County High School Saint James School

Severn School

St. Andrew’s School St. Margaret’s School Sts. Peter and Paul Tabor Academy

The Gunston School The Hill School

The Peddie School The Putney School Tower Hill School

Woodberry Forest School

More schools will be added as the event date approaches.

According to Tricia Cammerzell, Assistant Head of School for Advancement, “this year, we are delighted to welcome secondary schools from throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, New England and California. The purpose of the event is to bring as many secondary schools together in one place at one time so students and parents can get an overview of the wonderful options for high school. This is an opportunity for families to speak with admission representatives and decide if they want to delve further into the admission process for a particular school.

Cammerzell continued, “This year, we are also hosting a boarding school information session prior to the start of the fair. Representatives from the Mid-Atlantic Boarding Schools (MABS) which include Mercersburg Academy, The Peddie School, Episcopal School, Blair Academy and St. Andrew’s School will be on hand to talk to students and parents about the opportunities that boarding schools offer.” The MABS session begins at 3:00 p.m. in the Library and is also open to the public.

The secondary school process at Kent School is an intentional one. Nancy Mugele, Head of Kent School said, “At Kent School we are proud of the work we do for each student to prepare them for success in their chosen high school. We meet with families, conduct student mock interviews, create classroom situations similar to high school classes, and write in-depth recommendations. As stated in our mission, ‘Kent School prepares students for active citizenship through joyful and rigorous academics, arts, and athletics in an inclusive community that fosters moral excellence.” The Secondary School Fair is an important tool to help guide students and parents through the discovery, application, and enrollment process.”

For more information about Kent School’s Secondary School Fair, please email Tricia Cammerzell, Assistant Head of School for Advancement at [email protected] or call 410-778-4100 ext. 110. Kent School, located on the bank of the Chester River in historic Chestertown is an independent day school serving boys and girls in Preschool through Grade Eight.

Maryland fell behind a majority of states on markers of childhood health, as kids experience higher rates of obesity or being overweight and tens of thousands of children still do not have health care, according to a report released Monday.

The 2024 Kids Count Data Book, which is based on data from 2022, ranked Maryland 27th out of the 50 states for kids’ health. Maryland has been slowly falling in the rankings in recent years.

The 2024 ranking is down from 24th place in the 2023 report, which is based on 2021 data. And that was down from 18th place in the 2022 report, which reflected 2020 data.

“Maryland’s ranked fairly low compared to other states on health metrics specifically,” said Brandon Orr, president of the Maryland Center of Economic Policy (MDCEP). “It does suggest to me that there are things we can do to move the needle.”

Orr said that it’s hard to pinpoint why Maryland has been dropping in health rankings.

“There are a lot of moving pieces that go into that,” he said. “Whether that’s areas where Maryland might be slipping, but also where other states are making progress. It’s a difficult question to come up with a simple answer to.”

The Annie E. Casey Foundation releases the Kids Count report each year, in conjunction with organizations across the country. The Maryland Center of Economic Policy is the state’s partner for the report.

The analysis spans various topics to assess children’s well-being across the nation. In all other categories — education, family and community support, economic well-being — Maryland was still in the middle of the pack, but fared better than a majority of states.

That’s not the case for health. Maryland has either worsened in health indicators over the years, or has stayed stagnant and not improved, according to the report.

Maryland Department of Health spokesman Chase Cook said in an email Monday that the agency will review the new report closely and to continue its work to “improve children’s health in Maryland as well as the health of all Marylanders.”

The health category looks at four different indicators of health in children for state rankings: the percent of babies born at low birth-weights, the percent of children without health insurance, the rate of child and teen deaths, and the percentage of children who are overweight or obese.

“Exposure to violence, family stress, inadequate housing, lack of preventive health care, poor nutrition, poverty and substance abuse undermine children’s health,” according to the report. “Poor health in childhood affects other critical aspects of children’s lives, such as school readiness and attendance, and can have lasting consequences on their future health and well-being.”

Orr noted that there was a notable bump in the rate in deaths among 1- to 19-year-olds in the state in 2022.

The data shows that there were 404 child and teen deaths in Maryland in 2022, a rate of 28 deaths per 100,000 children. That was slightly better than the national average of 30 deaths per 100,000. But the number of deaths in Maryland has climbed steadily, from 350 in 2020 to 355 in 2021.

The data does not break down cause of death, but Orr speculates that it may have to do with increasing gun violence in recent years.

“From 2019 to 2022, the firearm death rate among children and adolescents increased by 46% (from 2.4 to 3.5 per 100,000). This translates to seven children per day dying by firearm in 2022,” according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, recently reported based on national data.

Orr also pointed to the percentage of children who are overweight or obese, which has been increasing in Maryland.

The recent data shows that about 36% of Maryland youths aged 10 to 17 were overweight in 2022, which the report classifies as children with a body mass index at or above the 85th percentile. Nationally, about 33% of kids were overweight or obese in 2022, the report said.

In previous reports, about 32% of Maryland children and teens were considered overweight in 2021, and about 29% of Maryland kids were overweight in 2020.

“Those are two areas that we might look to, that stand out to me as to why we’re slipping in the rankings in ways that Maryland has control over,” Orr said.

The two other health indicators have been fairly stagnant in the last three editions of the Kids Count report.

The percentage of children born at a low-birth weight was 8.7% in 2022, which just about matches the national percentage for that year. Maryland’s percentage has fluctuated only marginally in previous reports.

The other health indicator is the percent of children who are not covered by health insurance. About 4% of Maryland children didn’t have health insurance in 2022. That’s below the national average of 8.2% but higher than 2020 data for the state, when 3% of kids were uninsured.

Orr noted that the report is based on data that is two years old, and said the General Assembly has taken recent actions that might improve Maryland’s ranking in future reports.

“As one of the intersections of this, we know that a large percentage of Marylanders who lack health insurance are immigrants,” Orr said. “So that’s the lens in which the General Assembly has been passing laws to expand access to medical care.”

During the 2024 session, the General Assembly passed the Access to Care Act, which prompted the state’s health insurance marketplace to seek a waiver from the federal government to allow Maryland residents to purchase an individual private health care plan, regardless of immigration status.

In 2022, the legislature also passed the Healthy Babies Equity Act, which extends federal health care coverage for prenatal and postnatal services to undocumented immigrants who would otherwise qualify for Medicaid if not for their immigration status.

But that law didn’t take effect until January 2023, outside of the scope of the latest Kids Count report.

Orr is hopeful those legislative actions and others will help Maryland scoot up the rankings again.

“I am under no illusion that we are going to jump to number one any time soon, but I am optimistic that, regardless of what the rank is, the outcome of kids will be improving,” he said.

by Danielle J. Brown, Maryland Matters
June 11, 2024

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: [email protected]. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and Twitter.