On this page, find videos of virtual seminars to help you stay informed and healthy during COVID-19.

Table of Contents

• • Children’s Wellbeing During COVID-19: Mental & Physical Health

  • Mindful Parenting During COVID-19

  • Planning Your Child’s Summer During COVID-19

  • Back and Neck Injury Prevention with UW Sports Medicine

  • Newborns and COVID-19: How to Navigate Care

  • Ergonomics with Dr. Peter Johnson

  • Staying Grounded During Turbulent Times

  • Caring For Yourself and Others During COVID-19

  • Pregnancy During COVID-19: What You Should Know

  • Mask-Making Tutorial

Children’s Wellbeing During COVID-19: Mental & Physical Health

For most families, the return to formal learning this fall doesn’t mean going “back-to-school”. Instead, it will mean a return to remote instruction, more unstructured time and relying on technology for most socialization. During this webinar, three UW faculty, all clinicians at Seattle Children’s Hospital, discuss how parents can best care for their children’s physical and mental health during the COVID-19 outbreak, including questions like these:

• How is social distancing affecting my child’s social and emotional development, and what can I do about it?
• What does healthy screen time look like? How much is too much?
• How can my family share child care safely (e.g learning pods and care swapping)?  How can I tell my child care center is safe?
• What do we know about the pros and cons of having young children wear masks?
• What are signs my child may be struggling emotionally? How can I tell what is typical kid sulking and what may be a mental health concern?

Meet the panelists:

Dr. Dimitri Christakis is the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and has devoted his career to investigating how early experiences impact children and to helping parents improve their children’s early learning environments.

Dr. Matthew Kronman directs the Pediatric Infectious Disease Fellowship Program in the UW School of Medicine and Associate Medical Director of Infection Prevention at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Kendra Read is a psychologist at Seattle Children’s  specializes primarily in the treatment of youth with anxiety disorders and OCD, including when these disorders overlap with other difficulties (e.g., behavioral difficulties, autism, pain, eating, adherence to medical care regimens).

Mindful Parenting During COVID-19

Even under the best of circumstances parenting can be challenging, and when families are experiencing economic or work challenges, family conflict, mental health issues, divorce, death, or other stressful life circumstances, it’s even harder to be the parents we want to be.

COVID-19 has dramatically changed our daily lives, and families are faced with unexpected challenges and stress. Incorporating mindfulness practices into parenting can help parents navigate these circumstances more effectively. In this Zoom presentation, Dr. Lengua will share ideas on staying focused on what matters most for our children and interweave mindfulness practices that can be used in every-day interactions between parents and children to enhance parents’ effectiveness and relationships with their children.

Learning objectives include:

• Learn about best parenting practices of warmth, balance and consistency.
• Use mindfulness practices to increase use of best parenting practices.
• Use mindfulness practices to be present, calm and wise.

Liliana Lengua, Ph.D., UW Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Child and Family Well-being is a child clinical psychologist and a mother of 3 children. She is an internationally recognized expert on children’s vulnerable and resilient responses to stress, demonstrating how parenting and children’s temperament contribute to children’s unique responses to stress. She is also recognized for her research on the effects of stress and adversity on parenting and children’s social-emotional development, and has developed an evidence-based parenting program infused with mindfulness practices to enhance parenting effectiveness. She has been the principal investigator of several federally funded research projects and is the author of over 100 published papers.

Planning Your Child’s Summer During COVID-19

Parents have had an extremely challenging spring, adapting to changes and closures at schools, child care centers and community youth programs. While Washington aims to reopen many services in the coming months, many parents are likely to face new challenges when planning for their child’s safety, engagement and well-being this summer. As of early May, many youth program leaders and child care providers are still studying the phased plan for reopening Washington and making decisions about their summer programs. Some youth programs have already cancelled summer programs or are moving to virtual delivery.

UW Human Resources Work-Life will host a panel of experts to equip you with up-to-date knowledge and resources for planning your family’s summer. Panelists will answer these common questions and also take questions from webinar participants.

• What will determine whether programs operate in-person or virtually this summer?
• How can parents find out about summer opportunities for their children?
• How will in-person programs look different due to COVID-19?
• What can parents expect for their child enrolled in a virtual program?
• What precautions do youth programs take to ensure students’ safety in a virtual environment?
• Are there ways that families who don’t have reliable technology can connect their children with summer opportunities?
• How can parents help their child benefit the most from virtual summer programs?

Meet the panelists:

Leslie Rome has directed Summer Youth Programs at the University of Washington since 2005, striving to tap the vast resources of the UW to create unique summer learning opportunities where children and teens can explore new interests, take risks and grow. She earned a master’s in education degree with an emphasis in curriculum and instruction at Northeastern University, and has more than 20 years of experience helping nonprofits such as KCTS 9 and Seattle Children’s Museum extend the reach of their resources to the K-12 community.

Caroline Shelton directs UW’s Office of Youth Program Development and has more than 20 years of experience supporting children and youth in school, community and non-profit settings. Her work emphasizes professional education and training, organizational capacity building and program quality improvement. She received her MSW from UW in 2001 and has worked with the Harborview Children’s Response Center and Early Achievers, a Washington state quality rating and improvement initiative for licensed child care.

Jessica Paul Werner serves as Executive Director of Youth Development Executives of King County, a non-profit that builds bridges between organizations and across systems to create an ecosystem of supports for young people. Jessica has been dedicated to building the youth development field since she served as an AmeriCorps*VISTA in Portland, Maine in 1999. After receiving her Masters in Public Administration at the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy and Governance in 2002, Jessica supported youth worker professional development and youth leadership programs at the YMCA of Greater Seattle for nine years. Jessica started as YDEKC’s Executive Director and first staff member in 2011. Jessica is a proud Seattle Public Schools graduate and now lives with her family in Shoreline, Washington.

Back and Neck Injury Prevention with UW Sports Medicine

Newborns and COVID-19: How to Navigate Care

Join UW Medicine pediatricians, OB/GYN, and lactation specialists (Carol C. Salerno, MD, OB/GYN, Section Head, UW Medical Center – Northwest; Sheela Sathyanarayana MD, MPH, Pediatrics, Environmental & Occupational Health; Rebecca Cronin, M.D., Pediatrics; Ginna Wall, RN, MN, IBCLC, Lactation Services Coordinator, UW Medical Center) for a discussion about newborns and infant care during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this webinar, our experts answer your questions and discuss topics of concern, including:

• What do we know so far about COVID-19 and newborns?
• What precautions is UW Medicine taking for its patients and what precautions should family caregivers take in the infant’s first three months?
• Can the novel coronavirus be transmitted in utero, during birth or through breastfeeding?

Ergonomics with Dr. Peter Johnson

Join Dr. Peter Johnson, Professor Emeritus, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, and Adjunct Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering to learn everything you need to know about creating an ergonomic workspace—wherever you’re working! Click here to download Dr. Johnson’s updated slides. 

Staying Grounded During Turbulent Times

Join Lee Davis for a discussion on how to create a sacred space, remain grounded through emotional and physical windstorms, and practice cutting edge resiliency through unprecedented times. The topics covered include:

• Purposeful living
• Navigating through turbulent times
• The grandness of hardship
• Your authentic environment
• Mindfulness and heartfulness
• Loving yourself with all of you

Caring For Yourself and Others During COVID-19

Join Jared M. Baeten M.D., Ph.D., Patricia Kritek M.D., Ed.M., and Anne Browning Ph.D. for a discussion about how we can all best care for ourselves and loved ones’ physical and mental health during the COVID-19 outbreak hosted by The Whole U.

Our UW Medicine experts answer frequently asked questions covering the following topics:

• Personal care and best practices for sanitization
• Best practices for caring for at risk loved ones
• What we know about masks and their use for mitigating the spread of viruses
• Guidelines on in home social distancing, who should and how to do it
• Tips for essential workers
• Practicing mental and emotional resilience

Pregnancy During COVID-19: What You Should Know

Join UW Medicine doctors, midwives and researchers for a discussion about pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this webinar, our experts will answer frequently asked questions, including:

• What do we know so far about COVID-19 and pregnancy?
• What precautions is UW Medicine taking for its pregnant patients?
• Can the novel coronavirus be transmitted in utero, during birth or through breastfeeding?
• Should I wait to get pregnant?

Mask-Making Tutorial

Make a protective cloth mask at home with instructor Tess Brown, RN BSN MA CCM, a UW Medicine RN Case Manager.