Photo courtesy of Sorcha McCrohan ’21
Sorcha McCrohan ’21, the National Meningitis Association’s youngest advocate, spoke at Columbia School of Nursing.
BY GABBY RAYMOND ’20
When Sorcha McCrohan ’21 was 11, her mother Janet fell ill with a disease her doctors struggled to diagnose. Janet’s symptoms aligned with meningitis: headaches, a high fever and a stiff neck. By the time they figured it out, she had fallen into a coma and died of bacterial meningitis.
McCrohan was pulled out of her fifth grade class to say goodbye.
“She woke up once, just long enough to squeeze my hand and tell me she loved me,” McCrohan said. She had brought her mother the most recent art project she made and a list of promises. One of those promises was that she would make sure no one else would have to go through the same pain as her family because of meningitis.
That was 10 years ago — today, McCrohan is the National Meningitis Association’s (NMA) youngest advocate, working with the organization to spread awareness about meningitis vaccines. Most recently, McCrohan served as an expert panelist for the NMA’s Expert Panel discussion event on Nov. 4. She spoke alongside other advocates and medical practitioners on overcoming the challenges of vaccines for older teens.
Bacterial meningitis, an inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, is usually caused by one of five variants, known as serogroups. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), meningitis can be deadly and result in “permanent disabilities (such as brain damage, hearing loss and learning disabilities).”
People living in residential dorms on college campuses are the most at risk for meningitis because of the close living quarters — the infection can be spread by food and exchange of bodily fluids, such as saliva, with an infected person.
According to the CDC’s recommendations, all preteens should be vaccinated for four different subgroups of bacterial meningitis at ages 11 to 13, and receive a booster at age 16. These vaccinations are mandatory for
college entry. However, the MenB vaccine, which protects against serogroup B meningococcal strain, is considered acceptable by the CDC and not required or recommended like its counterparts.
As recently as the fall of 2018, there was an outbreak of meningitis within the Five Colleges, with two cases at UMass Amherst and another at Smith College. Of the three cases, one student had the strain of meningitis which the MenB vaccine would prevent, according to UMass University Health Services.
As a precaution, all Five Colleges offered the MenB vaccination those semesters.
“I remember going to the health center during the outbreak and there was a line out the door,” McCrohan said.
In 2017, McCrohan and the NMA advocated for the Five College Consortium to make the MenB vaccine mandatory for entry into their colleges. So far only Smith has heeded the advice.
One of the methods McCrohan spoke about during the NMA’s expert panel discussion was the need for teens to take action for their own health and spread awareness about vaccines to their peers.
When McCrohan was in her first year at Rye High School in Rye New York, she decided to make good on her promise to her mother.
“I created Mac for Jan, or Meningitis Awareness for Janet,” she said. “And we made learning about meningitis fun because it’s more effective for one teenager to tell another teenager why they should be vaccinated than it is for a healthcare professional or a parent to do the same.” Club members held bake sales, quizzed each other on the symptoms and prevention methods for meningitis and wrote letters to families affected by outbreaks.
The NMA modeled their own 16 Vaccine campaign, which focused on creating awareness around the second round of meningitis vaccinations, modeled after McCrohan’s high school club. During her panel, McCrohan recommended not only peer-to-peer awareness but also spoke on the doctor-patient interaction landscape.
“I encourage doctors to be talking to preteens about the meningitis vaccine, but also the MenB vaccine, because that is the cohort it is most significant to,” McCrohan said.
According to the NMA, less than half of the teens in the U.S. have their second meningitis vaccine, and there is currently no data on the MenB strain.
While the number of meningitis cases per year are at the lowest they’ve ever been in the U.S., that is believed to be because the majority of the population being vaccinated. McCrohan still believes spreading awareness is important.
“Meningitis vaccination is a burgeoning matter of conversation,” McCrohan said. “It’s still becoming more and more relevant as there is more traction to meningitis awareness.”
Speaking on the expert panel was not only important to McCrohan because of the platform it gave her to speak on awareness among teens, but also for personal reasons.
Her mother was a professor of architecture at Columbia University before her death.
“I can think of no better way to honor my mother’s legacy than to be asked to speak on the [campus] where she was working when she died from it,” McCrohan said. “I feel like I came full circle in fulfilling my promise to her.”
McCrohan is still only at the beginning of her medical advocacy career. Post graduation, she plans to pursue a PhD and specialize in medical sociology. She also plans to continue her advocacy for the NMA.
“My life has been one big miracle after another,” she said. “I needed an outlet for my grief and the NMA was there to support me. I love the work I do for them, and ultimately I do this for my mother, so no more families have to lose a loved one to a preventable disease.”