'Fidelity to the Model: How to expand School-Based Health Centers throughout your state.'
ABSTRACT SUMMARY
This presentation will describe the efforts and outcomes of the Georgia School-Based Health Center Project in expanding SBHCs throughout the state of Georgia. The discussion will focus on addressing the 4 key issues needed for replicating and taking SBHCs to scale: sustainability, evidence of community need and support, evidence of health and health cost impact, and fidelity to exemplary models. Strategies on community engagement, recruitment of local and regional medical providers, effective data collection, and uniform clinic development will be discussed.
ABSTRACT DESCRIPTION
One in 5 persons in poverty are children less than 18 years of age of which 40% are African American and 34% are Hispanic children. Their number is growing, especially in the South where 55% of poor rural African-American children lack access to health services. School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs) provide access to health care for children living in poverty. Public schools present an opportunity to reach underserved populations on-site with quality healthcare services, yet nationally <1% of elementary schools house a SBHC despite more than 2 decades of demonstration programs.
Scaling these programs up nationally and especially in southern states such as Georgia is a challenge. It has been recognized that there are four issues that must be addressed in taking SBHCs to a sustainable scale. They include:
1. Meeting community needs through formal needs assessments and planning
2. Seeking funding sources to ensure sustainability
3. Measuring clinic effects in the areas of health and cost impact
4. Maintaining implementation fidelity to model SBHC programs
This presentation will describe the efforts and outcomes of the Georgia School-Based Health Center (GASBHC) Project in expanding SBHCs throughout the state of Georgia. The discussion will focus on the first 2 issues addressed by GASBHC in taking SBHCs to a sustainable scale: evidence of community need and support and sustainability. The planning process which involves extensive community engagement and the collaborative efforts with local and regional medical providers (i.e. federally qualified health centers) to ensure sustainability will be highlighted. In addition, we will discuss our current efforts to address the last 2 issues required for scalability: measuring the impact of SBHCs on health and health costs and preserving implementation fidelity. We will share quality benchmarks and a data collection tool that has proven to be useful in establishing and monitoring outcome measures needed to demonstrate impact. The tool captures clinic enrollment and utilization data as well as targeted health outcomes (i.e. asthma, obesity, health maintenance). It is also being used to create uniformity among SBHC sites which contributes to program fidelity .Finally, along with representatives from the Student Support Services Team for the Fulton County School District, we will discuss the value of developing and maintaining a strong SBHC Advisory Council for the purpose of addressing the 4 key issues needed for scalability.
PRESENTER(S)
NAME: Veda Johnson MD ORGANIZATION: Emory Univeristy School of Medicine
AUDIENCE
ADMINISTRATORS: Y
PRIMARY HEALTH: Y
MENTALHEALTH: N
ORGANIZATIONAL: Y
PUBLIC HEALTH: Y
EDUCATION: Y
YOUTH: N
Technical
issues should be directed to Deirdre Taylor via email: dtaylor@sbh4all.org
or Telephone: (202) 638-5872, ext. 204
