What do educators say about school-based healthcare?
School-Based Health Centers have been providing a #healthcare safety-net in Minnesota's #publicschools for so long, it is hard to imagine what operating our metro-area schools may have looked like without them. Data from the past year alone is astounding.
Without Minnesota’s school-based health centers, in 2023 alone, there would have been thousands more unnecessary ER visits, hundreds more untreated dental cavities, too many more suicides. Students would have missed more class time. Parents would have missed more work. Over 20,000 Minnesota students would have faced unmet healthcare needs.
However, because 30 schools in Minnesota have had school-based health centers for years, we see this instead:
Over 20,000 families accessed benefits for themselves, and their kids got free care.
Students got sports physicals without ever spending time benched.
Entire districts lowered their risk of communicable disease through immunization programs.
Teen parents had access to prenatal services, parent education and ultimately, graduation.
A few hundred students a year started to feel sick in school and got strep tests and antibiotics before even going home.
We do not have longitudinal data of these past 50 years. But our educators, our superintendents, our students and their families, can tell us stories like this:
“One of the amazing things that we don’t always associate with health care are academic outcomes and success outcomes for students. Our attendance rates since opening our Health Resource Center have gone up significantly, grades – increased, graduation rates – increased, test scores - increased. Across all groups and all demographics in Richfield Public Schools. It really helps our students succeed in school, and in life.”
– Steve UnowskiDr. Unowski is the Superintendent of Richfield Public Schools and a strong supporter of Richfield Health Resource Center, provided by Park Nicollet Foundation