State Budget Could Threaten Popular School Health Centers By HANNAN ADELY
Kayla is the first of dozens of kids who file into the school-based clinic for a midday dose of medicine, under the watchful eye of family nurse practitioner Linda Giuli. Like Kayla, many are asthmatic, while others may take Ritalin or need a prescription for the flu. Once the midday medicine rush clears, Giuli, who heads the clinic, tends to kids with ear infections, tummyaches, and other ailments. Kids also line up for physicals, immunizations, and dental care at the clinic, which is run by Montefiore Medical Center. Parents and staff have nothing but praise for the school clinic. "That place is a godsend because any problem the kids could have, we just send them downstairs and they're well taken care of," said PS 8 assistant principal Jose Vergara. But Vergara and others are worried about the fate of the state's 159 school-based health centers, because Governor George Pataki's current proposed budget includes no new money for the program. Parents, teachers and health care workers want more funding because they say clinics are expanding and attracting more and more students every year. Clinics Keep Growing When PS 8's clinic opened in April of 1996, funded largely by state and
federal Since then, the clinic's popularity has skyrocketed, and it now serves 90 percent of the school's 1,200 kids and many of the students' parents and siblings. To absorb all those patients, the Board of Education converted an old locker room in the school into a modern medical center with three examination rooms and a waiting room. Other clinics in the area at PS 95, MS 45 and DeWitt Clinton High School, are also widely used, according to Megan Charlop, operations manager for Montefiore's 11 school-based health clinics. Charlop and other administrators say the school-based clinics are ideal for the community's working poor, who often cannot afford health care, and for undocumented immigrants worried about filling out hospital forms. Advantages All Around Parents say the benefits of the clinics are immeasurable. "If two parents are working, you reduce the stress factor of having to pick your child up from school, take time off, and make a doctor's appointment," said Mary Ann Canapi, who has twin nieces in PS 8's first grade. Because clinics are able to treat kids right away, they are able to prevent the spread of contagious illnesses and are able to keep kids in school, health professionals say. "The quality of life that kids have is better," Charlop said. "They're better medically managed, so their attendance improves." For instance, when Canapi's niece Ashley came down with strep throat, clinic staff diagnosed her right away and got her the proper prescription. Within 48 hours, Ashley was feeling well and back in school. At PS 8 and other school clinics, kids with chronic illnesses, like diabetes, migraine syndromes and heart problems, can get treatment without having to miss crucial class work. Often, children with chronic illnesses are transferred to PS 8 if they lack a clinic at their neighborhood school. Clinic Eases Parents' Fears Probably the greatest benefit of school-based clinics, parents say, is peace of mind. "It's very, very important to have a clinic there, because there's so many kids who are sick," said PS 95 parent Chandra Lowe. "It's very scary for parents who have asthmatic kids." Lowe believes staff at PS/MS 95's clinic may have saved her son's life. One day in class, her son Nicholas began to cough roughly and felt his air passages tighten up. He was experiencing an asthma attack so severe he almost passed out, his mother explained. Nicholas was rushed to the clinic, where the nurse gave him an injection and aided his breathing until an ambulance arrived. "If the clinic wasn't there, I don't know what would have happened," Lowe said. Clinics Could Lose Funding Lowe is one of thousands of parents in the state who wrote letters to Governor Pataki urging him to expand funding for school health centers. "I wrote about the experience of my son, I wrote about how dedicated the nurse is and about how many times they have helped my kids," she said. "It really is a great thing and I hope they don't take the grant away." Pataki's current budget would keep the program's funding at the same level of $10 million. But Pataki also recently announced that 19 more school clinics would be created, with no new funding, according to Carol Reichert, coordinator of the New York State Coalition for School-Based Primary Care. Reichert feels at least an additional $10 million is needed to adequately maintain the clinics. If the state does not increase funding, the effects could be severe, Reichert said. "It means they're going to have to make do with less," she said. "In some cases clinics will close. Hospitals will have to look at the bottom line, [and if they're losing too much money], the clinics are going to close." At the very least, the clinics will not be able to provide the same level of care if there are more clinics tapping into the same pot of funding, Charlop predicts. An intensive campaign is under way to make sure that doesn't happen. In addition to a statewide letter-writing campaign, buses from all over the state will go to Albany on Feb. 13 to lobby legislators for more funding. While lawmakers hammer out a deal in Albany, parents and kids continue to pour into local school clinics. "If clinics of this caliber were present at every school, then we could have a nation of healthy children," Giuli said. Ed. note: Mosholu Preservation Corporation, the publisher of the Norwood News, is a not-for- profit support corporation of Montefiore Medical Center. For more information on health clinics at local schools, call Montefiore's School Health program at 920-7995.
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Every day at 10:30 a.m.,
Kayla, a first grader at PS 8 in Bedford Park, visits the health clinic at
her school and takes a tube of medication off the shelf and empties it
into an asthma nebulizer. She secures a clear mask over her mouth and
inhales the medicine's vapors, which clear her lungs and make breathing
easier.
grants, it served about a quarter of the student population. "We
had a tremendous response from parents because greater than 50 percent of
our children don't have insurance," Giuli said.
