SCHOOL-BASED CLINICS:
The Pajaro Valley Unified School District (“PVUSD”) and Salud Para La Gente (“Salud”) are pleased to announce a three-year agreement in which Salud will provide medical, dental and vision services in 5 elementary schools in the District, will continue to provide services in 2 middle schools, and will continue its existing referral programs from 1 District middle school and from the District’s 2 high schools in Watsonville.
The agreement for school-based clinics is mission-driven, and reflects the entities’ shared commitment to children—their education and their health.
Salud is a nonprofit health care organization, which provides high quality, comprehensive and cost-effective primary care to the uninsured and medically underserved members of the Santa Cruz County area. A Federally Qualified Health Center, Salud turns no one away, and provides service to all, irrespective of ability to pay. PVUSD has over 18,000 students enrolled in 32 schools within the District.
The District will provide space at its school sites, and Salud will provide the health care personnel, equipment and supplies. The 5 elementary schools which will host clinics beginning in September are: Freedom, H.A. Hyde, MacQuiddy, Mintie White and Starlight.
Read the schedule and locations of school based medical and dental services HERE.
Salud Para La Gente proveerá servicios en los siguientes sitios.
Services to be offered include:- medical—physical exams, sports physicals, health screenings, immunizations, treatment of minor injury & illness, diagnostic labs, written prescriptions;
- vision—screenings and eye exams, referrals for comprehensive eye examinations, eye injury and disease assessment & treatment, referrals to ophthalmologists and other specialists;
- dental—routine dental exams & risk assessment, x-rays, preventive dental care, restorative services including fillings and extractions, minor dental emergency services, information about prevention of tooth decay, referrals to specialists, and coordination with a child’s primary care medical provider.
In addition to the above services, Salud will provide health and nutrition education, parent education, wellness, obesity prevention, disease prevention, oral health hygiene and dental disease prevention, and classroom presentations.
Salud will provide services to PVUSD students and their minor children and minor siblings at no cost to the school district. Reimbursement to Salud will come from private insurance, public insurance, federally-established sliding scale fees based on income, and can include pro bono service where appropriate. Outreach eligibility workers from Salud and registration specialists from PVUSD will seek to qualify patients for public insurance programs, if the patient has no private insurance and has not already applied for available programs.
Salud currently provides service at Cesar Chavez Middle School (Children’s Resource Center) and Pajaro Middle School (Pajaro Resource Center), along with referrals to its two major clinic sites from Rolling Hills Resource Center at Rolling Hills Middle School, all of which will continue.
Salud will also continue to operate its Teen Resource Center from Watsonville High School, referring patients to its main clinic site at 204 East Beach Street, and will continue referrals from Pajaro Valley High School Resource Center to its Beach Street clinic and its Pajaro Valley Clinic at 45 Nielson Street.
“Our collaboration will promote the health and well-being of school-age children and adolescents,” said PVUSD’s Assistant Superintendent for Educational Services, Cathy Stefanki. “We are delighted to partner with Salud in promoting school health by providing universal access to health care for all of our participating schools. We believe that healthy students plus healthy schools equals improved learning by our students,” Stefanki added.
In describing the goals of the school-based clinic program, Salud’s President and CEO Sr. Julie Hyer, O.P. stated, “Our program seeks to increase student access to affordable primary care and respond to immediate health needs, offering a continuing relationship with a health care provider that children often lack. Working together, we want to achieve a higher school attendance rate and improve student achievement by decreasing illness and absence, and decreasing the likelihood of passing on disease and illnesses to other students. We will educate students and their parents in many areas, including importantly, obesity issues, which are increasingly of concern.”
Both Stefanki and Hyer also said that the program will track health statistics to identify health improvement benchmarks, and will seek to create a long-term sustainable model for school-based clinics.
From far left: Kathleen Kilpatrick, PVUSD school nurse; Rachel Sandobal, Salud Clinic Business Manager and Project Manager at Salud for the PVUSD-Salud school-based clinics project; Ray Hauser PVUSD Director of Special Ed; Brooke Smith Ph.D., Salud Director of Grants & Outreach; Brett Knupfer, PVUSD principal H.A. Hyde; Sr. Julie Hyer, O.P., President and CEO of Salud; Olga de Santa Anna, PVUSD principal of Mintie White; Jack Davidson, PVUSD principal MacQuiddy; Mark Donnelly, PVUSD principal Starlight; Jean Gottlob, PVUSD, principal of Freedom Elementary School; Joe Trautwein, PVUSD Director of Student Services; Faris M. Sabbah, PVUSD, Director of Migrant Education; Ian McGregor, PVUSD principal of Cesar Chavez Middle School.
For further information, at PVUSD contact Cathy Stefanki at (831) 786-2100 ext. 2540; at Salud contact Rachel Sandobal at (831) 763-3417.
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