A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
ellen spitaleri / clackamas Review
Milwaukie High School students, from left, Camila Lambert, 15, Edson Barrera, 17, Clarissa Patubo, 16, and Anna Demidovich, 16, check on the health of Vice Principal Michael Ralls, center, during a recent visit to Cleveland High School’s school-based health center.
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A school-based health center is still in the planning phase, but Milwaukie High School Vice Principal Michael Ralls is hoping that the center will be up and running at MHS by fall of 2010 or January of 2011.
The advantages to students will be huge, he said, noting that students who do not have health insurance will have access to free medical care at the center.
Convenience is another factor, he added; if students are ill they can come to school and receive medical attention and prescriptions, which in turn will cut down on school days missed.
“We have students who are out for a week and can’t see a doctor, because they are underinsured or the co-pay is too high. We have students who get progressively sicker, until their only option is going to the ER,” Ralls said.
At the school-based health center, students will be able to get general medical care, as well as immunizations and sports physicals.
This past school year, Ralls and a team of teachers and staff members formed the School-Based Health Center Planning Committee, and engaged in outreach discussions with parents, community members and the faith-based community.
Discussions will continue next year, Ralls said, adding, “We are looking ahead to engaging in discussions about all the pieces of the health center – we want to be transparent with this process.”
Funding
According to figures gathered by the Oregon Department of Human Services, there are 52 school-based health centers in Oregon, and those numbers are expected to go up in the next two years. The state has a budget to help establish the centers, and Milwaukie High School has received planning funds.
Once the clinic starts to become a reality, however, a wide variety of sources will be tapped to help fund it, including some state and county money, insurance reimbursement payments and community support.
The process of providing convenient health care to students in the Milwaukie area came under discussion two-and-a-half years ago when Ralls, then vice principal at New Urban High School, met with Zachary Goldman, project manager for Outside In, a social service agency dedicated to providing care to the homeless population and homeless youth.
“Michael and I started talking about is there a need for medical care [at NUHS], and we decided that yes, it would be a valuable resource. We worked out all the logistics and brought a medical van to New Urban in November of 2007,” Goldman said.
The van, which comes to school once a week, functions as “a doctor’s office on wheels,” he said, adding that it is staffed with a nurse practitioner and a drug and alcohol counselor.
“New Urban was our first foray in schools, and it makes sense for us. We see this type of work at schools as upstream medical intervention. What we found at NUHS is that we created an integrated safety net and gave the students a wide variety of resources,” Goldman added.
The van still makes weekly visits to NUHS during the school year.
MHS
Funding for the medical van was partially provided by a national private foundation, some local support and a grant from DHS, Goldman said, noting that when Ralls was transferred to Milwaukie High School in the fall of 2008 the grant money came with him, and that is when the two men began to think about planning for a school-based health center.
Ralls described this year’s planning sessions with staff, students, parents and the community as providing a “conceptual framework” for a school-based health center, and said next year the planning will “become more tangible.”
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