Walla Walla School Gets $20,000 Grant for Health Care Center

By Laura Kate Zaichkin, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.

Mar. 24–WALLA WALLA — Lincoln Alternative High School students someday could go from math class to receiving needed health care without even leaving campus.

The state Department of Health awarded Walla Walla School District a $20,000 grant last week to develop plans for a school-based health center.

The school board gave unanimous approval to begin working on a needs analysis and feasibility study for a health facility at Lincoln, said Mark Higgins, a district spokeswoman.

“This is just the first step,” Higgins said, adding that the studies could take months. “There’s really no dispute that there’s need for health care in Walla Walla.”

Dr. Alison Kirby, a pediatrician at Walla Walla Clinic, helped the district apply for the grant given to 10 communities in addition to Walla Walla.

She became involved in October when she learned many teens in the community did not have access to medical, nutrition, dental and mental health care.

“One of my jobs is to make sure I understand the challenges for children and adolescents in Walla Walla,” she said. “It was fairly widely understood by people in the school district.”

According to the state’s 2006 Healthy Youth Survey, more than one out of three Washington youths had not seen a doctor or health care provider for preventive care in a year.

“Teens are the least likely group to get the physical, oral and mental health care they need,” state Health Officer Dr. Maxine Hayes said in a news release. “There are too many barriers preventing youth from accessing needed preventive and clinical services.”

School-based health centers are nationally recognized as one of the best ways to provide heath services to teens who have little or no health insurance, according to the Department of Health.

There are 17 school-based centers in Washington — mostly in King and Kitsap counties.

“If kids don’t have good health they don’t do well in school,” Kirby said.

Most of the grant recipients, including the Dayton School District, are low income, rural and have below-state-average WASL scores.

“Many of them come from poverty,” Higgins said of the school of about 200 students. “It was (Kirby’s) idea that something like this could help.”

Kirby said the long-term goal for a school-based center at Lincoln is to provide basic medical care, mental health services, substance abuse prevention and treatment, nutrition information and dental care.

“As a community it’s cost effective,” she said. “Because we have kids coming into the emergency departments in a time of crisis.”

But she said it’s too soon to tell what the district’s feasibility and needs studies will reveal.

“I think the needs are there,” Kirby said. “The main thing (is) that I want families to understand is that we’re hearing them.”

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