Melissa Yeaton works to improve district health and wellness.
By Samantha C. DePoy
Staff Writer

NEW SHARON – Melissa Yeaton has a personal wellness plan that judging by her broad smile, seems to do the trick.

“It makes me feel good to help other people,” said Yeaton, the new SAD 9 health coordinator.

Yeaton, who grew up in Leeds and went to Hebron Academy, came to Farmington for the first time as a student at the University of Maine at Farmington. It’s a community she quickly came to love.

After getting a degree from UMF in community health education, she worked for Tri-County Health Services and then began commuting all over the Northeast as a work-site wellness health educator for Cianbro.

After she and her husband, Nathan, had a baby boy, Elijah, who is 19-months old, Yeaton decided it was time to find a job that would keep her closer to her family, and Farmington.

In November, she took on the SAD 9 position, and in two months has already made the district healthier for students and staff, working out of the district’s central officers as 11 School Lane in New Sharon.

The school health coordinator post is paid for by the Fund for a Healthy Maine using tobacco settlement money. The job is funded for five years. It’s in its third year. Yeaton replaced Jim Fortunato.

The coordinator works to improve district health and wellness with an eight-prong approach that includes improving wellness programs for staff and making sure selections in school vending machines have health snacks and drinks instead of sugary sodas.

And because schools don’t have enough money to implement programs that work to combat the growing problems of obesity, mental health issues and substance use among students, much of Yeaton’s days focus on finding outside funding.

“Today we have kids with high cholesterol, obesity is a huge problem and everything is supersized so there are lots of things working against our kids these days. So anything we can to stand up for them and support them is important,” Yeaton said. “Maybe we can help change that culture.”

So far, she and the district’s wellness team have worked to chart out indoor walking routes at many of the SAD 9 schools. The wellness team has also sold more than 300 pedometers and issued a walking challenge for teams to see who can go the furthest. Yeaton hopes challenges like these will keep staff in motion and thus improve their physical and mental health and productivity, saving SAD 9 tax money in the long run.

Yeaton believes that school staff are students best role-models, and if kids see that their teachers value health, they’ll follow suit.

She’s also working to develop more afterschool intramural sports for students who want to get fit but not compete on one of the district’s competitive teams.

If students and staff focus on having an overall healthy lifestyle and not on being perfect, Yeaton believes in the end they’ll achieve their health goals.

Yeaton doesn’t just preach good health behaviors, she also practices them, serving on the ski patrol at Titcomb Mountain, eating right and spending time gardening, swimming and enjoying the outdoors.

“I just try to get out and move,” she said laughing.

For more information, contact Melissa Yeaton at 778-2951.

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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