By David Harrison, The Roanoke Times, Va.
Jul. 23–Suppose you’re a high school student in Roanoke whose family has no health insurance and who doesn’t have a family doctor. Where do you go if you need medical help?
For the past 16 years that place has been the teen health centers, located at Patrick Henry High School, William Fleming High School and the Hurt Park Community Center.
The centers offer sports physicals, school physicals, treatment for minor injuries and illnesses, immunizations, family planning education, contraception and, starting last year, mental health counseling for those ages 10 to 19.
It’s a valuable service. And Ken Mundy, executive director of the Roanoke Adolescent Health Partnership, would like to see it expand.
“Education and prevention is our goal,” he said. “We’re dealing with obesity, mental health, sexually transmitted disease, family planning issues. All of those we treat but we also try to educate.”
Of the more than 3,000 adolescents served last year at the centers, most were from Roanoke. But a sizable number came from Salem, Vinton, Roanoke County and Bedford County.
Starting next year, Mundy said, the partnership will try to send information home with Roanoke County students to broaden the centers’ reach. In the past, only city students were sent home with information about the centers.
Mostly, however, patients hear about them through word of mouth. Despite taking a relatively low profile, the partnership’s educational mission has shown some impressive results.
For instance, roughly 15 percent of the pregnancy tests done at the centers turn out to be positive. But among patients who have spoken with staffers about family planning, the rate of positive pregnancy tests falls to 1 percent, Mundy said.
The partnership is independent of the school system but works closely with school health officials, city officials and the health department. Students younger than 18 need parental permission to visit the centers.
“We don’t provide transportation but we’ve found that if teens really want to get there they find a way,” said Brooks Michael, a member of the Roanoke Adolescent Health Partnership Board of Directors.
If patients have health insurance, the partnership will bill their insurance provider but about 28 percent of patients don’t have insurance and about 25 percent don’t have a family doctor, Mundy said.
“We’re their only point of contact for health care,” he said. “We don’t want to be that. We prefer that they have a family doctor and they have regular medical care.”
The partnership also moved into a new facility at the recently completed PH last year. Until then, the school’s health center was in a trailer on school grounds.
At Fleming, the center will stay in a trailer next year while a new high school is under construction.
“This time next year we should be getting ready to open it,” Mundy said.
Mundy said the partnership has talked about possibly opening a new branch to relieve pressure on the Hurt Park teen health center, the busiest of the three.
While the high school-based centers are closed for the summer, the Hurt Park center is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays in the summer.
Many of the patients from outside the city visit the Hurt Park center, as do some Roanoke high school students who perhaps don’t want to be seen going into one of the other teen health centers on the two campuses, Mundy said.
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