Lunchroom, gym, optometrist? Ohio schools build on-site health clinics
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Students returning to Springfield High School this year can access a full-service health center, complete with exam rooms, a lab with flu and COVID vaccines, and spaces for counseling and group therapy.
The resource isn’t down the street. It’s down the hallway.
“This is the student waiting area,” said Anita Biles, Springfield City School District’s health center coordinator, pausing outside a room lined with a neat row of chairs. “So out the door and to your right is the main hallway that goes into the [school] building.”
The clinic is stocked with state-of-the-art equipment. Exam tables measure a patients’ weight, so they no longer have to step on a scale.
Around the corner, there’s a room for vision exams.
“We'll have the opportunity to have this room designed where students could pick out their own glasses,” Biles said, pointing to an empty wall. “So we would have our own selection of glasses.”
Further back, there’s space reserved for three dental beds.
“And so we'll be able to do cleanings,” she said. “That is a desperate need in our community.”
The impact of health care on learning
The health center at Springfield High School is open to anyone who lives in the small city 30 minutes northeast of Dayton. But students are the top priority.
“The purpose of the center is to be fully accessible and available to our families who typically might have a hard time accessing health care,” Biles said. “What this does is allow students and their families to be seen immediately, with the ultimate goal of getting them back into the classroom quicker.”
Currently, she said, there aren’t enough providers in town to serve the city’s growing population, so students sometimes face long wait times to see a doctor.
On top of that, more than one in five people in Springfield live under the poverty line. For those families, finding transportation or taking time off work to take a kid to the pediatrician can be extra difficult.
And when kids don’t get don’t get health care, it can be hard to focus on subjects like geometry and Shakespeare.
“If my tooth hurts, I don't want to eat,” Biles said. “And if I don't want to eat, I'm going to school hungry. And if I'm going to school hungry, all I think about is now I'm hungry. And then I’m tired.”
But with nurse practitioners, counselors and even dentists, just down the hallway at school, students can get care right away.
“They have immediate access to immunizations, so that they can stay in school,” Biles said. “When they're not feeling well, instead of just staying home and hoping it gets better in 4 to 5 days, they can get immediate medical services, get on medication faster and then maybe they can get back into school in less time.”
The expansion of school-based health centers
The idea of school-based health centers is spreading quickly across Ohio.
Last academic year, there were 135 centers in the state, according to the Ohio School School-Based Health Alliance. Nearly two-thirds were established in the last five years alone.
So far, these centers tend to cluster around urban areas. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, for example, recently announced it’s expanding a health center at Hughes STEM High School, part of the city school district.
But rural schools are starting to see the utility in clinics too, and the state has taken note. Earlier this year, it dedicated $64 million for mobile and school-based health centers in Appalachian districts like Gallia County.
A health care solution in Gallia County
In southeast Ohio, Gallia County Local School District’s chronic absenteeism rate is climbing. School administrators say about a quarter of the small student body misses more than 10% of school days.
District treasurer Jack Webb says health care access is a part of the equation. The school of 250 middle and high schoolers sits behind a gas station and a Baptist church. The closest health clinic is 15 miles down the winding, rural road to town
“If you're a parent and you work in Gallipolis, you're taking off 45 minutes to an hour earlier to come out, pick your student up, go all the way back into town, take them to the doctor, bring them all the way back home after the doctor's appointment,” he said. “You've wasted half a day's sick leave or a half a day's vacation. And your student’s lost half a day in the classroom.”
Ever since the pandemic, Principal Bray Shamblin said kids are more likely to stay home when they’re sick. The solution in his eyes is multi-faceted.
“One, we have to be able to persevere and teach a little bit of that perseverance, even when we're not feeling the best,” he said. “But at the same token, addressing those issues the right way, if you're truly sick, seeking that medical attention.”
That will be a lot easier next school year, Shamblin said, when South Gallia Middle-High School has a new health center — much like Springfield’s — just down the hall from the library.
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