Save the Date
Operation House-Call Picnic
May 5 2018 at Mitchell Park in Palo Alto, California
On May 5, we will be holding our 10th Annual Operation House-Call picnic to celebrate our collaboration with the Stanford Genetic Counseling Master's Degree students and SVDSN families. Everyone is welcome to join in! The more families the students get to meet, the better!
Come to Mitchell Park at noon and enjoy lunch provided by SVDSN, fun conversation, and cake with the genetic counseling students. This is a kid-friendly, family-oriented event. Afterward, enjoy the Magical Bridge playground with other SVDSN families! Participant families will receive an email invitation from the Stanford Genetic Counseling program. All families are welcome to attend. Please contact Marcy for details: mnmamiya@yahoo.com.
About Operation Housecall:
Each year since the degree program's inception, SVDSN has paired an incoming first-year student in Stanford's Master's Degree program in Genetic Counseling with an SVDSN family. The goal is for students to have experience with a person with Down syndrome in a non-clinical setting and to talk to the family about what it is like to have a family member with Down syndrome. It is our hope that this gives them real life experience to draw upon once they begin their careers as genetic counselors, rather than information from books or research articles. We want to provide these students with the family perspective, not just the medical perspective. We want them to see the person, not the diagnosis! Because genetic counselors are often one of the first points of contact, SVDSN believes in the importance of changing pipelines and the positive impact our children have when they have the opportunity to advocate for themselves.