In 2009, SJSU Health Science Student, Samantha Dauz, partnered with retired educator, Marilyn Bliss to create a grant that would provide oral health services to special needs youth in East Side Union High School District. With this grant and funding from Santa Clara County, the team of health educators built a curriculum that would help their priority population in life skills and expand their knowledge in their health and well-being. After a couple of years, it was time that the GoodHealth Program would need more stable funding. It was at this time where the GoodHealth partnered with Goodwill of Silicon Valley to be fully funded and continue providing health and life skills services.
They were lead under the direction of Youth Programs Department Director, Bruce Shimizu. In addition, this partnership would allow Samantha and Marilyn to utilize the services of the institute to provide mobility training and work experience.
Each year, Samantha and Marilyn would hire a team of five or six college students from various departments at San Jose State University, especially the Health Science Department (now Health Science and Recreation). These interns would be the leaders and educators of the classes provided directly to students at their high schools.
In 2013, Samantha continued the legacy as the new Program Coordinator. During Samantha’s time in leadership, she built a rapport with the East Side Union High School District and established multiple annual events for their students to be involved in social skill development by joining all of the schools for community field trips. She also began the annual Post Senior Health and Career Fairs.
In 2014, Samantha hired Serafina Morada-Angulo as her assistant with the purpose to eventually be her successor. And in 2015, Serafina took the reigns on the program as Program Manager. Since then, the program has expanded into two more districts and the college intern teams have almost tripled to up to 20 intern members for 2019-2020 year to serve in our schools.
In 2020, the Goodhealth team temporarily switch from in-person facilitation to virtual facilitation due to the rise of COVID-19. As the future became more and more unforeseen, GH had to shut down the program.
In 2022, after two years of the shutdown, Youth Programs at Goodwill of Silicon Valley recruited the former Program Manager, Serafina to become the Program Advisor and to help recruit a new Program Manager. As the search began, Serafina had made it her mission to polish and reconstruct the program that was once shut down two years ago.
After months of searching, Serafina discovered Ivanna Reano who would take the new role of Program Manager. Since then the program has been reconstructed and successfully relaunched in the Fall of 2022.
(Picture: Post Secondary Health Fair 2015 – From left to right, Samantha D., Diane N., Lydia, DeAnna Q., Erica D., Guadalupe, Alexis R., Serafina M.)