SARALAND, Ala. — Students in Saraland City Schools will soon be able to see a pediatrician without leaving campus. USA Health is launching a weekly school clinic that will rotate among the district’s four schools beginning Thursday, Sept. 24, bringing wellness checks, sick visits and sports physicals directly to where children spend their days.
The expansion comes a year after USA Health pediatric providers began offering a weekly health clinic at LeFlore Magnet High School in Mobile, and it marks the health system’s move to carry that school-based model to a second district.
How the Saraland clinic will work
Two USA Health pediatricians, Jennifer Cole, M.D., and Myria Mack-Williams, M.D., will provide pediatric services to students on four campuses in the Saraland City School District on a rotating basis. Each week, one of the two physicians will staff the clinic.
Students will not need to arrange visits on their own. A school nurse will schedule appointments, which keeps the process inside the school’s existing health office and lets the nurse direct students who need care to the visiting doctor.
Services offered through the clinic include:
- Wellness checks
- Sick visits
- Sports physicals
- Preventive care for school-age patients
Saraland City Schools operates four schools: Saraland Early Education Center, Saraland Elementary School, Saraland Middle School and Saraland High School. The district was created after Saraland residents voted in June 2006, with about 70% support, to break away from the Mobile County Public School System and form their own city system.
‘Keep students in class longer’
USA Health leaders said the goal is to make care faster and easier to reach, and to keep children in class instead of sending them away from school for appointments.
“By bringing USA Health pediatric providers directly to where students attend school, we can more quickly and compassionately address healthcare needs without requiring them to leave campus,” said Natalie Fox, DNP, PNP-BC, CEO of USA Health. “This is a way to improve access, keep students in class longer, and it connects them to our academic health system, which can mean earlier detection and treatment of health issues.”
For working parents, a clinic on campus can also mean fewer hours missed from their own jobs. When a child can be seen during the school day by a pediatrician the school nurse has already arranged, a parent may not have to leave work, pick the child up and drive to a doctor’s office across town.
What the research shows
Research on school-based health centers has found significant health benefits for students, including fewer emergency room visits and hospitalizations and improved health outcomes. Those improvements can in turn lead to better attendance and greater academic success.
School-based health care has grown across the country as schools and health systems look for ways to reach children who might otherwise go without regular checkups. The model can take several forms, from full-time clinics built inside a school to part-time or rotating clinics like the one planned in Saraland, where a provider visits on a set schedule. The common thread is that the care comes to the student rather than the other way around.
Training ground for future pediatricians
The Saraland clinic also serves an educational purpose for USA Health, the academic health system of the University of South Alabama. Benjamin Estrada, M.D., chair of the Department of Pediatrics at USA Health, said the outreach gives pediatric residents hands-on experience in the community.
“Dr. Cole and Dr. Mack-Williams are passionate about outreach initiatives that advance pediatric healthcare and promote school health,” Estrada said. “Their shared commitment to serving children and families where they are, thereby increasing access to pediatric healthcare, while simultaneously providing our pediatric residents with valuable community-based clinical experiences, is an outstanding reflection of our department’s mission.”
Mack-Williams is an assistant professor of pediatrics who sees patients at USA Health’s General Pediatrics Clinic at the Strada Patient Care Center on Center Street in Mobile. She earned her medical degree at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and completed residency training at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and the A.I. duPont Institute in Wilmington, Delaware. Her clinical work covers conditions common among children, including diabetes, food and milk allergies, celiac disease, flu and strep infections.
LeFlore clinic continues
The Saraland program does not replace the service at LeFlore. USA Health Adolescent and Young Adult Health providers will keep seeing students for well and sick visits in a mobile health clinic on Tuesdays during the school year at LeFlore High School. As in Saraland, appointments there are made through the school nurse.
The LeFlore clinic, which opened a year ago, gave USA Health a working example of how a weekly school-based clinic could operate. Saraland’s version takes the idea a step further by rotating across four campuses, which means the clinic will reach students from the early grades through high school rather than a single high school population.
Sports medicine on the sidelines
The school clinics are part of a wider set of USA Health services for local students. USA Health Sports Medicine staff members provide coverage at most Mobile County Public School football games. Sports medicine team members and colleagues from across the health system also offer free sports physicals each summer to high school athletes and band members at the USA Mitchell Center.
With sports physicals now available through the Saraland clinic as well, student athletes in the district will have another option for completing that requirement during the school year without a separate trip to a doctor’s office.
Parents in Saraland City Schools who want their child seen by the visiting pediatrician should work through the school nurse at their child’s campus, who will make the appointment. The clinic will rotate across the district’s four campuses on a weekly schedule starting Sept. 24.