Meningitis B
Student Hub – created for students by students.
This hub is a central resource for peer health educators and students on all things Meningitis B. Our goal is to make it easier for you to educate and advocate for Meningitis B (MenB) prevention on college campuses. All materials and resources have been created in collaboration with an amazing group of students from across the country.
Let’s start with the basics.
What is bacterial meningitis?
Meningitis is an inflammation (swelling) of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. There are 5 different types of meningitis – bacterial, viral, parasitic, fungal, and non-infectious. Meningococcal meningitis is the most common form of bacterial meningitis among young adults.
There are 5 types of meningococcal bacteria that cause meningococcal meningitis - ABCWY. In this curriculum, we focus on Meningitis B because it’s responsible for all bacterial meningitis outbreaks on college campuses since 2011, and college students are 5 times more likely to contract it than non-college students. 2 types of meningitis vaccines, MenACWY and MenB, are needed to help protect you against meningococcal meningitis.
How do I talk about Meningitis B?
We’ve compiled simple key messages to help you speak accurately and effectively about Meningitis B.
Why is Meningitis B prevention important?
The Meningitis B Action Project was founded by Patti Wukovits and Alicia Stillman. Patti and Alicia each lost their young, healthy daughters - Kim and Emily - too soon to a now vaccine preventable disease, Meningitis B.
Meet Kimberly, 17
Kim died one week before her high school graduation from Meningitis B.
Meet Emily, 19
Sophomore Emily died from Meningitis B 36 hours after her first symptoms.
Free educational materials. Just click to download and contact us for hard copies!
Tools & Resources
to Help
Here are a few tools to help you educate students and advocate to your college administrators for better Meningitis B prevention measures on campus.
Tips + Inspiration
There are so many great ideas out there from students and peer health educator on building awareness around important health issues affecting young adults. Here are a few we loved. We hope these stories will help prompt ideas for improving awareness of Meningitis B on campus.
Want to contribute your own favorite, or share how you’ve made a difference on campus? We’d love to highlight your work! Shoot us a quick note and we’ll be in touch.
Looking for more information? Here are a few handy links from our partners and supporters:
Meningococcal Disease Prevention in College Toolkit (NFID)
About Bacterial Meningitis (CDC)
We would like to give special thanks to all of the students who helped develop this resource to ensure that college students are as protected as possible from Meningitis B.
Alex Singer
VaxTeen
Arin Parsa
Teens for Vaccines
Christopher Giang
University of Michigan
Elizabeth Chung
University of Virginia
Faith Farber
Kalamazoo College
Kaitlyn Maurais
Skidmore University
Kelly Danielpour
Stanford University, VaxTeen
Melanie Arnold
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Mira Bagous
University of Virginia
Nataschia Wibben
University of Oregon
Nick Lucido
San Diego State University
Sidney Simpson
Clemson University
Thérèse McCusker
Rutgers University
Yara Hussein
University of Oregon