HELENA — Bruin Pure Performance is a health club at Capital High School that gathers students together to help raise awareness on various health topics within their school and community.
A group of around 50 Capital High students gathers together twice a month to plan ways to promote living a healthy lifestyle to various groups around the community.
On Friday, the club visited the Montana State Capitol to talk about ways to prevent teen vaping.
"Today we are here with the American Heart Association. We are lobbying to increase the prevention budget by $4 million just because things like e-cigs have become a major problem within the school of vaping, it's a significant problem," said Joey Paulson-Morgan, Capital High Schools health, weight, and training educator.
Paulson-Morgan is also a co-sponsor of the group but considers himself more of a liaison. He tells me that it's really the students who lead the meetings.
"The coolest part about my job is that I get to work with students like this that have the same passion as me, just that a lot younger age. So it kind of takes me back in time a little bit. I get to see what's really going on in high school, and that helps me to bring awareness within my health classroom to and to what I'm teaching and what I put in front of the students," said Paulson-Morgan.
Paulson-Morgan says, sophomore student, and President of Bruin Pure Performance, Ashlynn Cornwell, is an important part of the club, and community.
"It's really important to have a president, somebody like Ashlynn Cornwell, that can lead the students because even though they all have great ideas, they do need somebody to kind of take charge. She does a great job with that," said Paulson-Morgan.
Cornwell says that having a position like the president of the club is a big deal to her, especially with being able to connect with the younger students about living a healthy lifestyle and possibly gain future bruin pure performance members along the way.
"Being able to reach out to as many people as I can for the next two years and including this year, because it's just really important to me just because I'm an athlete and I know how things like eating healthy and doing like drugs and vaping can affect just like how you perform as an athlete and life in general," said Cornwell.
Cornwell tells MTN that the Bruin Pure Performance club is planning a community fair for April, which is during Alcohol Awareness Month. With a BBQ and games to spread messages of awareness to the community.
"Next month is April is Alcohol Awareness Month," said Cornwell, "So next month we're going to be doing a fair it's going to be like a bunch of like outdoors games like Spike Ball, Cornhole, The Ladder game and we're going to have like a barbecue that people can come and like enjoy their community."