Having a school-based health center is tremendous for the kids.

It's a great place to make an impact even if it's just with one adolescent

The health center helps give them guidance and shows them ways to protect themselves and prevent certain diseases from happening.

Each time when we make a difference for a youth, I believe this is a success.

VOICE OVER:
The School-Community Health Alliance of Michigan represents and supports over 50 school-based health centers located in urban, suburban and rural areas across the state. These centers are strategically located to serve low income children and families, as well as communities that are medically underserved.

James Davis, Director of Student Services, Lansing:
It's hard enough being an adolescent. I see kids doing their best when they feel their best.

VOICE OVER:
School based health centers promote the health of children, adolescents and their families by providing important primary, preventative, and early intervention and services. Housed in elementary, junior and senior high schools, centers are capable of providing comprehensive care to over 100,000 children throughout Michigan. By serving children from kindergarten through high school, school-based health centers have the opportunity to establish a continuity of care that is critical for child development.

Nicole Speck, Nurse Practitioner:
Sometimes people go, ?oh you're just the school nurse." Our role is very unique in that it's an independent center attached to a school, but it's a full service clinic. We do laboratory testing, diagnosis and treatment, write prescriptions, immunizations; everything necessary that they would need in a primary care provider's office.

Stephanie, 8th grade student, Lansing:
It's really cool to have it just right in our school so that if we get sick our parents don't have to schedule a doctor's appointment for us.

Rhonda Major, Social Worker:
We just find that clients are really satisfied with our services; we have a great return rate. Clients come back, they feel like it's a friendly atmosphere and they really are able to get the services that they need.

Bobbie, 11th grade student, Inkster:
Things are clean and nice people to talk to about anything. While some people try to make decisions for you or try to judge you, they don't do that.

VOICE OVER:
By focusing on individual children and their families school-based health centers increase student performance, reduce attendance problems and decrease school violence. School-based health centers remove physical and emotional barriers to learning, helping to keep students in school.

Walker Beverly, former Principal:
It helps students to get a chance to zero in on academics, and also get away from misbehaving, those kinds of things, and other health issues that can hinder progress.

VOICE OVER:
At the heart of each school-based health center are parents, school administrators, and medical professionals working together. Driven by this collaborative relationship each health center is able to provide a wide range of services designed to meet the needs of children and the community as a whole.

Walker Beverly, former Principal:
We work like a team. The director of the health center and I worked in tandem. We try to work the problem and solution it. It worked out pretty well.

Marian Triplett, Parent:
We have a community advisory board made up of people from a lot of different sectors.

Madelon Broadnax, Grandparent:
It just seemed like a good program to me. So, I decided I wanted to be involved.

Mary Zeineh, Parent:
They were kind of like my helper and a friend to my kids and a support to our whole family.

Marian Triplett, Parent:
It is real current as to some of the things that our kids are going through here.

Daphne Marbury, Social Services Coordinator:
The office stocks our forms so that any new student that comes in, they make sure that that is part of the school packet that they have to fill out in addition to whatever school forms. So we get that back. We work with all of the staff. We're in their classrooms on a regular basis running programs. We are in the halls.

VOICE OVER:
Beyond primary preventive care, many school-based health centers also provide services such as comprehensive health assessment, vision and hearing screening, medication, immunization, treatment of acute illness, co-management of chronic illness and mental health care.

Dr. Sharifa Abou-Mediene:
We carry many programs, because we kind of complete the school system.

Dr. Dean Sienko:
It's a combination of attending to whatever clinical needs they may have as well as trying to impart good health instruction and give them skills that will carry them for the rest of their lives.

Dr. Sharifa Abou-Mediene:
Nutrition and healthy diet.

Daphne Marbury, Social Services Coordinator:
Hypertension and diabetes.

Dr. Sharifa Abou-Mediene:
Asthma prevention.

Daphne Marbury, Social Services Coordinator:
We run violence prevention programs. We run an abstinence program.

Lauren Kazee:
Besides providing medical services, to provide social work services.

Dr. Sharifa Abou-Mediene:
To build a relationship with youth you have to spend time with them you need to build their trust.

Girard, 11 grade student, Inkster:
I come down here sometimes when I feel?I feel down or something. They talk to me about it and I won't feel so bad.

Tyrell, 12th grade student, Benton Harbor:
The things students bring them, I couldn't do it. They have such compassion and heart.

Graham and Hillary Turner, former students, Lansing:
They look you in the eyes and talk to you like an adult which I always appreciated.

Leon, 11th grade student, Inkster:
You meet people, you talk you get to know them and they become like family.

Robin Henry, Nurse Practitioner:
It provides you with access to a population that is very hard to gain an access to, by putting you right there where they are.

Paul Shaheen, Advocate:
That is significant for their educational outcomes; it's significant for their community outcomes and significant for reduction in problems as well as enhancing the capacity of kids to learn.

VOICE OVER:
School-based health centers make high quality care broadly accessible to members of their communities.

Nicole Speck, Nurse Practitioner:
We bill on a sliding fee schedule and it's our mission to see those living in the community that nobody is turned away from and inability to pay.

Robin Henry, Nurse Practitioner:
It doesn't get any better than that as far as I'm concerned, as far as health care and being able to actually getting to serve people.

VOICE OVER:
With adequate funding school-based health centers are able to overcome barriers to healthcare for underserved children, as well as reduce health related costs to the state.

June Moore, Program Director:
It's real cost effective to invest in prevention activities with these teens.

Paul Shaheen, Advocate:
You've got a model that's nurse practitioner driven with physician oversight and managed care connections so that it's the cheapest way to deliver care.

VOICE OVER:
The services offered by school-based health centers are supported financially through state and federal grants as well as through local funds and private contributions. Although the Michigan Department of Community Health and Michigan Department of Education provide critical funding for school-based health centers, it is important that centers continue to elicit a stable and diverse funding stream to support the essential services that are provided to children and their families.

Lauren Kazee, Program Director:
That money from MDCH can only go so far so it's good to have other resources.

Nicole Speck, Nurse Practitioner:
And so we are funded not only through the state association but also we have a fiduciary hospital.

Lauren Kazee, Program Director:
We have funding from Michigan AIDS fund who gives us money to do the HIV testing and education and then we also applied it to get funding from another foundation that covered medical supplies and lab costs.

Nicole Speck, Nurse Practitioner:
There are a lot of donors and a lot of supporters and we are very grateful for that.

VOICE OVER:
All Michigan children and youth have a fundamental right to access and receive comprehensive primary health care and prevention services. By providing these services at low cost within a school setting school-based health centers strengthen the children, families and communities they serve.

Wilce L. Cooke, Mayor, Benton Harbor:
If you do not have good health care then you are going to fall behind.

Dr. Dean Sienko:
Kids don't tend to go to see doctors or go to health clinics, but when you have a presence in a school like this they do come.

Paul Shaheen, Advocate:
And where there is a partnership between the school and the community it's the best solution most communities have to take care of all of that in one efficient partnership.

Dr. Sharifa Abou-Mediene:
Then we are able to do a lot of helping but we feel we can do more.

Nick Edwards, Principal:
It's been a blessing to our school just to have them in there and I think that down the line we'll probably do a lot more because we understand each other and we have common goals.