Brittany Allen, MD, Author at Growing Up Healthy

Blog posts by Brittany Allen, MD

Dorm Room First Aid: Packing For Your Health

August 18, 2016By Brittany Allen, MD and Nisha Baliga

We know there are very few things more overwhelming than packing up your whole life to move into a really tiny college dorm or apartment. What do you bring with you? What sounds like a great idea to pack now, but will just end up unused and taking up precious space? How many forgotten items will your parents be willing to ship before you go home for Thanksgiving?

Today, we’re going to make this process easier by compiling the following list of important medical items so you can spend less time inside your school’s health center and more time experiencing all that college has to offer. Because – let’s face it – some sort of illness, scrape, or injury is inevitable, and it’s better to be prepared than to be scrambling to find a pharmacy store when your final paper is due in 45 minutes.

Transition, Part III: For Teens with Complex Medical Conditions

April 13, 2016By Brittany Allen, MD

Welcome back! As you know, we’ve been exploring transition, or the process of getting ready for medical care as an adult. We’ve talked about what transition is and why it is important as well as the general steps in transition. As you can imagine, the general timeline applies to most teens, but can be much more complicated in youth that have complex medical needs. Some of this complexity can come from the number of providers involved (which can be many) or may relate to differences in intellectual ability that make it important to discuss things like whether another adult should be involved in helping the young adult make decisions after the age of 18. In our final post in this series, we’re going to explore some of these additional considerations, so that the transition process can be as smooth as possible for all teens.

Transition Part II: The Whens and Hows

April 7, 2016By Brittany Allen, MD

Welcome back! We are in the midst of our three-part series about helping teens transition to receiving health care as adults. In our last post, we discussed what transition is and reviewed some cases to consider why transition should be a part of every teen’s health care.

This week, we’ll consider how and when transition actually happens. For practical purposes, we’ll focus on what teens and families can do in preparing for this process, but it’s also important to acknowledge that transition should be a team effort between the family, the teen, and all of the health care providers involved. For some folks, that may be one or two providers, but it might involve many more than that (and may extend to folks in legal and school arenas as well) depending on a person’s health history. Don’t forget to check out next week’s post for more information about additional tips to facilitate a smooth transition for teens with complex medical issues!

Transition: Helping Teens Manage Their Health Care

March 31, 2016By Brittany Allen, MD

I’m going to let you all in on a little secret: if you want to know what’s hot in the world of adolescent medicine, it’s transition. Seriously. Everyone is talking about it. There are whole conferences devoted to it. Journal articles written about it. Task forces formed to improve it.

But somehow, despite all of the hype in the world of medical professionals, the conversation – not to mention the concept – has not always reached patients and families. You may even be wondering what the term “transition” means in this case… and you would not be the only one.

Break the Cycle: Preventing Teen Dating Violence

March 3, 2016By Brittany Allen, MD and Tyce Kearl, MD, PhD

Break the Cycle on Teen Dating Violence As you might remember, February is National Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. While you might be thinking to yourself, sure… but it’s no longer February, we’re extending this Leap Day to a Leap Week, which means that we’re right on the mark (and feel totally justified given that the temperatures here are in the single digits and there are several inches of snow on the ground). Additionally, preventing teen dating violence is incredibly important, so we’re giving it a little extra attention.

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