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By Editor Becky Watts
ZEBULON - On February 8, 2012, approximately twenty community volunteers, a member of county government, and representatives from the school and various healthcare providers in our area gathered to "define the box" for the proposed School Based Health Center. Michael Powell, Director of Pike County’s You Equal Success (Y.E.S.) Team, Inc, began the meeting by reading through the list of frequently asked questions and answers that can be accessed by clicking here.
Some of the questions asked whether a School Based Health Center was required to provide only clinic services or if it would be required to provide clinical services in our community. The answer to each of these questions is no. According to the document which can be accessed above, the community decides what services are needed and these needs can focus on Mental Health and/or Health Promotion/Health Prevention. And at this time, nothing has been decided for sure about the proposal for the Pike County School Based Health Center.
Other frequently asked questions include: Will Emory will provide the health care services by sending their physicians to Pike County? No. Are there any further strings attached when the grant period ends on August 31, 2012? No. Any unused grant funds will be returned on September 1, 2012. Will there be a dental clinic or pharmacy on site? No. Will telemedicine be utilized if clinical services are provided? No. All decisions about the clinic are made on a local level. Will students from surrounding counties have access to health services at the Pike County SBHC? No. This would only be for Pike County students.
And one of the biggest questions that has been asked is: Who makes the final decision on the SBHC for Pike County? The Strategy Planning Team will continue through this month planning process to develop an implementation plan that will be presented to the Pike County You Equal Success Team Board of Directors for their consideration. If the YES, Inc. Team gives its approval, then the plan will be presented to Pike County School District Superintendent Michael Duncan for consideration. If he gives his approval for this to be shown to the Pike County Board of Education for its consideration, the Pike County Board of Education will have final approval on the proposed Pike County SBHC.
The next item for discussion was "defining the box" that participants would like to place around the Pike County SBHC. In discussing what participants wanted to see here in Pike County in a SBHC, a theme emerged from the school, providers, YES Team members, and members of the Services Team. The Services Team advised that the biggest needs were prevention and promotion of health and mental health. The YES Team advised that mental health was the biggest need that they saw. Pike County School Superintendent Michael Duncan advised that evaluations from within the school district show a need for mental health services/education with almost 100 students--not including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)--who are undiagnosed and do not have access to mental health services. "Parents don't know how to plug into mental health services," said Dr. Duncan. He added that this would be a huge convenience to have this on site. The medical community in Pike County advised that they saw a need for mental health education and treatment in our county including on site care for mental health services. It was the consensus of participants in this meeting that mental health prevention and promotion was the common ground between all of these suggestions.
Parent accountability was stressed along with this consensus because providers will not be able to see students without the presence of a parent. Director Powell also stress accountability of providers by saying that providers will have to meet Pike County's guidelines. "It's us saying what we want," he emphasized. In response to a question about what kind of facility could be located here, Mr. Powell elaborated by saying, "That's where we as providers, community people, decide what do we want? How do we do this? And how do we make it happen? And what's the best way to do it?"
Mr. Powell rounded out the discussion by emphasizing that Mental Health and Health Prevention and Promotion are the common threads to all participants on this SBHC. He defined some of the terms that came out of the discussions. Health prevention, promotion, and education could be providing parent education on topics like drug and alcohol education, nutrition and obesity training, asthma, diabetes, and ADHD training and education class. This could even be a children's health fair, Mr. Powell said. This would be done in an effort to provide parents with resources and services.
With a vote of the participants at the meeting, mental health and health prevention, promotion, and education is the focus of the proposed SBHC. "[This] is what we will stick to," said Mr. Powell. He emphasized that nothing will be taken away from this focus or added to it.
Who is responsible for this SBHC and its focus down the road? Mr. Powell advised that this will be part of the strategy planning and process to figure this out because there is no answer for this question right now.
The earlier strategy teams were then refined into two new teams to refocus on the different components of Mental Health and Prevention, Promotion, and Education. The Health Promotion and Prevention Strategy Team and the Mental Health Strategy Team are the names of the two new strategy teams. Participants were given the opportunity to choose which team that they wanted to be a part of and the two teams met on the third Thursday of February in two separate locations to discuss specific questions that were provided to them. The Revenue Strategy Team will be a part of this planning process at a later time.
Upcoming Meetings:
The Chairs of each Strategy Team will meet with Regina Abbott and Mike Powell on the second Wednesday of each month on March 14, April 11, June 13, and July 11 from 12 noon to 1 p.m. and the Stategy Teams will continue to meet on the third Thursday of each month. The next quarterly meeting with all strategic planning teams will be May 9, 2012. A strategic planning workshop is planned for August 8, 2012 from 8:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. There is still time for volunteers to be a part of the strategic planning of this School Based Health Center initiative.
If you are interested in being a volunteer in this process, please contact Michael Powell at 770-567-2930 or powellm@pike.k12.ga.us.
History of this grant
The planning for a proposed SBHC would be funded through a $10,000 grant that has been provided through Emory University Department of Pediatrics Urban Health Planning. The grant was applied for by Pike County’s You Equal Success (Y.E.S.) Team, Inc. which is part of the Georgia Family Connection partnership. Members of the community and medical providers are meeting as part of a strategy planning team that will produce a plan for the Pike County SBHC. This is an eight month long process with monthly and quarterly meetings to determine the goals and procedures of the Pike County version of this SBHC.
More than 300,000 children in Georgia are uninsured and have limited access to routine healthcare according to a November 2, 2010 press release about the Emory Urban Health Program released by the Georgia Family Connection Partnership. One way to provide care to those who have limited access to healthcare is through school-based health clinics as part of a $3 million gift from the Zeist Foundation. The first eleven grants for school-based clinics were awarded in 2010 with seven grants being awarded in 2011. Pike County is one of those seven counties that have been awarded this year.
Veda Johnson, MD, Executive Director of Emory University Department of Pediatrics Urban Health Planning and co-founder of the Whitefoord Community Program's school-based clinics, was the guest speaker at the School-Based Health Center Lunch and Learn in Zebulon on December 15, 2011. This program was presented by Pike County’s You Equal Success (Y.E.S.) Team. Over fifty people were in attendance including representatives from the Pike County School System and business community as well as the Pike and Spalding County public health communities and concerned citizens. Click here to read about this meeting and explore numerous links to find out more about this program in detail.
Additional Resources:
Click here to read the January 31, 2012 article entitled “School Based Health Center Discussed at Chamber of Commerce Meeting”.
Click here to read the January 20, 2012 article entitled “Strategic Planning Begins for School Based Health Clinic”.
Click here to read the December 28, 2011 article entitled "School-Based Health Clinic Grant Awarded". This article has links so that readers can look into the program in depth. This article has links so that readers can look into the program in depth.
Click here to read the December 1, 2011 article about this Lunch and Learn and link to information that was distributed to the Pike County Board of Commissioners in the November night meeting.
Click here to read the answers to Frequently Asked Questions.