Universal Companies' schools offering full-scale health centers

AS PRINCIPAL of Universal Bluford Charter School, Crystal Gary-Nelson saw about 6 percent of her students missing daily last year. That's a pretty low number, but one she wants to improve upon.

The issue, she said, was not so much truancy, but sickness.

"For us, if I can just keep my scholars in school healthy, that's a bonus for us," the second-year principal said. One of the problems is "kids being sick for a prolonged period of time and it going untreated."

To help address the issue, the West Philadelphia school and the seven other schools run by Universal Companies now have a full-scale health center, a hybrid between a school nurse and a doctor's office. The centers are staffed with a full-time medical assistant and a part-time nurse practitioner who can give physical exams, administer immunizations, write prescriptions and treat acute illnesses with parental consent.

The health centers are the result of a partnership between Universal, Education Plus, a local nonprofit, and the National Nursing Centers Consortium. The model is similar to walk-in clinics, now available in some CVS pharmacies and grocery stores. The centers are funded by Universal and through partial reimbursements from an insurance company.

School-based health centers are on the rise nationally, but are still fairly uncommon in Philadelphia, which has the highest poverty rate among large U.S. cities. Advocates say they help cut absenteeism, which leads to better academic outcomes and prevent parents from missing work to take their child to a doctor.

"Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, parents aren't able to get them the care they need, so we can increase those chances here," said Julie Cousler Emig, executive director of Education Plus, which established its first school-based health centers in 2010 at two city charter schools. "There's a high population of asthma, which is the biggest cause of absenteeism."

Considering many of Universal's schools are in the city's poorest communities, the need for comprehensive medical care is even greater. Some families lack insurance or primary care physicians. As a result, Universal has opened the service up to young siblings of students and hope to eventually expand it to other family members.

The center at Bluford sees about 15 to 20 kids a day, along with some staff and faculty. Some of Universal's school-based centers see as many as 30 students, Emig said. Most of the visits involve cuts and scrapes, stomach viruses or flu symptoms, but there have been a few that required students to be sent to a hospital.

Sophie Heng, an administrative assistant at Bluford, saw the advantage of the center first-hand this week when her 7-year-old son, who has a rare liver disease called biliary atresia, went to be checked out for a fever. "I don't have to explain [to the nurse] what biliary atresia is. Most people would be like 'What is that?' I can just say he has biliary atresia and they'll be like 'We can't give him any [acetaminophen],' and they'll know what to prescribe him."

The ultimate goal is to broaden the service to provide education to the community about healthy living, said Rahim Islam, president and CEO of Universal Companies.

"Access to quality health care - we've got to hit a homerun on that, and I think that's the start of this partnership," he said, "but we're going to expand it to education [for] the community [and] our students on what it takes to be healthy, stay healthy."