PORTLAND, Maine – This week, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) announced that the City of Portland’s school-based health center (SBHC) at Portland High School was selected to receive a $225,000 capital improvement grant. The grant will fund significant improvements for the school-based health center tripling the size of the clinic to one thousand five hundred square feet. The renovations will provide a centralized location for the variety of services offered at the health clinic including preventative and primary health care, mental health and substance abuse services, reproductive health care and oral health care. Currently, half of all Portland High School students access the health center during the school year.
“School-based health centers are leading the way in redefining health care for kids and teens and today’s grant announcement will dramatically improve the quality of services we are able to provide to Portland High
School students,” stated City of Portland Mayor Michael Brennan. “This investment means that for hundreds of Portland teens, they will have equal access to comprehensive health care regardless of their access to health insurance or their family’s ability to pay.”
The city’s Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Division operates five school-based health centers at Portland High School, Deering High School, Casco Bay High School, King Middle School and the East End Community School, with the majority of funding provided by the Fund for Health Maine, the state’s tobacco settlement dollars dedicated to prevention and wellness initiatives. During the last school year, forty-four percent of SBHC enrolled children were uninsured with forty-two percent insured by MaineCare. Research has found that school-based health centers decrease absenteeism, reduce unnecessary and costly emergency room visits, and ensure quality and cost-effective care for children and adolescents.
SBHCs are able provide close follow-up to patients with chronic medical diseases including obesity, hypertension or depression. Often, these are patients who fail to return to their Primary Care Provider for follow-up visits despite an ongoing medical concern. SBHCs serve as a key partner to students’ medical homes in the provision of preventive health, management of chronic disease and provision of acute services when barriers exist to access of their primary medical homes.
Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics recognized SBHCs as “an important method of health care delivery for the youth of our nation.” The Academy went on to publish recommendations to support the “integration and coordination of SBHCs and the pediatric medical home practice.”
More than $80 million in grant awards for nearly two hundred school-based health care programs across the nation were announced this week. The funds are the third and final round of grants designed to improve access to primary, mental, and oral health care for school-aged children. In 2011, HRSA awarded the first round of grants in an initial installment of $95 million, with a $14 million installment released later that year. Portland received an earlier award for renovations at the King Middle School school-based health center as well as funds for the purchase of mobile medical equipment utilized at the five centers. The funding secured through the Affordable Care Act was the first time federal funds were directed solely to SBHCs. Grants were available for construction, renovation, and equipment needs.
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