Positive People in Pinecrest : Nadya Young

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Positive People in Pinecrest : Nadya Young
Nadya Young

Miami Palmetto High School senior Nadya Young is president of the LEO Club for the second year in a row. As president, she organizes and leads the blood drives at school.

“We’ve had two blood drives this year, Oct. 5-6 and Dec. 7-8,” she says. “We’ve saved about 500 lives.”

Before the blood drives, Young goes into classrooms to brief the students on the importance of donating blood. They emphasize that for every donation, they get to save three lives.

Those face-to-face conversations help make connections with students and leads to successful blood drives.

Along with the blood drives, LEO members participate in a letter writing campaign called Hearts for Heroes. Last year they collected letters for healthcare workers and gave them to the health care workers at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.

“We worked on the letters during December 2020,” she says.

They wrote the letters, collected letters from the health occupational classes and they decorated the letters before giving them out.

In 2020, they collected 40-50 letters. This year they wrote and donated many more thank you letters. They were given to the health care workers at the Baptist Hospital Urgent Care in South Beach.

Young’s long-term goal is to become an OB/GYN.

“Helping people makes me want to be involved in health care,” she says. “Public health is so important. Being part of LEO and spreading the word about the blood drives makes me happy.”

Last year was a difficult year for Young. Along with the continuing disruptions at school because of COVID, she also caught COVID and spent 20 days in isolation at home last January, before vaccines were available.

“It was the worst experience,” she says. “I had such a pain in my back. I was alone. It was so sad. I couldn’t see my parents.”

She thinks she got it first, and then her dad caught it.

“My dad tested after me,” she says. “He turned out positive and had no symptoms where I had flu like symptoms.”

Young worried that her asthmatic sister would get it, but luckily her sister remained COVID free.

In this instance, taking classes online helped Young. She missed a few days of school but was able to go back to class faster because she didn’t have to leave her room.

Her extracurricular activities include Students Working Against Tobacco (SWAT). The club advocates against the use of all tobacco products, including vaping.

“We don’t know what vaping does 20 years down the road,” she says.

In keeping with her desire to help others, Young is a member of the Health Information Project. She is trained on health topics and goes into freshman classrooms to teach the younger students about the subjects such as mental health and STDs. They also educate students about the importance of vaccinations for community health.

“It’s great to have the conversation,” she says. “We speak to them and we have the conversation. We do get a lot of questions. They are actually receptive to it.”

The modules also go into the importance of handwashing, social distancing and wearing masks.

Young a member of the student cabinet for the Class of ’22. She has won awards such as the Outstanding Junior in Health Science and was a sophomore princess on the Homecoming Court in tenth grade.

Outside of school, Young volunteers at Holy Rosary-St. Richard’s Catholic Church.

She has been accepted to Lynn University, Stetson, Barry University, and Nova Southeastern. She is waiting for several more acceptance letters. She plans to major in biology or public health on a pre-med track.

Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld


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