Noah Johnston sat down with Dr. Nancy Fox and Jake Broughton of the L.E.A.F. team to discuss their important work.
A not-so-new non-profit, the Lyme Education and Awareness Foundation is an organization founded in 2015 focused on teaching children about tick bite prevention strategies. Dr. Nancy Fox, the group’s leader, is a lifelong educator, as well as a published author of several children’s books focused on tick bite prevention.
The sooner you know and understand ticks, the better you can develop behaviors that change the possibility of being bitten.
As a Lyme patient herself, Nancy knows how difficult and scary it can be to deal with the debilitating symptoms. Given this experience, she vowed to help as many children as possible be prepared to prevent this from happening to them. She, along with other members of the L.E.A.F. team, spent the summer of 2019 on what they refer to as the Lyme Education Tour. On this tour, they visited schools, camps, fairs, farmer’s markets, and anywhere else that would have them, teaching children about tick bit prevention. Sharing educational content specific to children’s needs, they used coloring sheets, excerpts from Nancy’s book, and interactive learning exercises led by L.E.A.F team members.
On the 2019 summer Lyme Education Tour, we drove 11,000 miles through 16 states, educating over 5,000 children, plus adults that were there along the way.
Forced to stop this highly successful tour in 2020 due to the rise of COVID-19, the foundation is hoping to get back to its roots in 2022. While they still were able to serve to a couple of camps and markets in 2021, impacting the lives of at least 1,200 kids, they are ready to be back on the same level grind they achieved in 2019. You can help them do so by emailing drnancyfox@gmail.com if you know of any school programs, camps, fairs, farmers markets, etcetera that may benefit from hosting the Lyme Education Tour.
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