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The University of Miami program brings crucial medical services to students who face health care access issues.
The University of Miami/Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation School Health Initiative (SHI) will be bringing crucial medical services to students who face health care access issues, expanding its operations from nine to 36 schools with a significant award from The Children’s Trust.
Established in 2000 by the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation, SHI provides integrated, comprehensive and free school health services, acute care, mental health services and preventative care to Dade-County students facing barriers to adequate health care. Dr. Gwynn and her team successfully competed for the $4,321,000 grant and will use that financial support to bring health care and education to nearly four times as many children and adolescents in underserved communities in the Miami-Dade area.
According to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services statistics, between 7% and 8% of Miami-Dade residents 18 and younger have no health insurance coverage over the past five years.
“There are still plenty of children in Miami who don’t have access to health care,” said Lisa Gwynn, D.O., M.B.A., M.S.P.H., professor of clinical pediatrics and public health services at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the medical director of its Pediatric Mobile Clinic and school health programs. “SHI serves as an integral safety net for these students, providing full-service medical care and mental health services in the areas of our county that need it the most.”
SHI manages two types of health care operations in schools – primary care clinics and nurse health suites. The primary care clinics are complete with exam rooms, a laboratory, a nurses’ station, conference rooms and a waiting room. Their comprehensive health services include well visits, sports physicals, management of chronic health conditions and state-mandated health screenings for vision, blood pressure, BMI and mental health.
The health suites resemble a traditional school nurse’s office and provide basic first aid, administer medications and notify parents when health situations warrant. They also provide state-mandated screenings and connect students who need health care to the school-based primary care clinics.
“Our wraparound services bridge the gap in health care these students face,” said Dr. Gwynn. “We’re really the only program in Miami providing school-based services at that level.”
As Dr. Gwynn and her team begin the process of setting up the new clinics, June is a crucial month for the program’s aggressive expansion, with SHI staff adapting existing care spaces to its specific service portfolio and processes. All clinics must be operational by the start of the 2025-2026 school year.
“Many of these schools already had clinics managed by different agencies, so the infrastructure is there,” said Dr. Gwynn. “But we’ll need to bring in our own technology and staff and train them the way we want them to be trained.”
We’d love to see SHI serve as a national model, bringing these types of services into underserved communities outside of South Florida.
Dr. Lisa Gwynn
SHI’s health suites and primary care clinics offer easy access to a versatile array of services at a crucial time in child and adolescent development. From appendicitis to students having suicidal thoughts to families who suddenly become housing insecure, SHI offers providers adept at diagnosing a wide range of health issues and finding the correct solution.
“It’s not just boo-boos and Band-Aids. It’s real-life challenges,” said Dr. Gwynn. “A month ago, our lead pediatrician, Dr. Sarah Sukkar, cared for a student who was having chest pain in the clinic. She performed an examination and an EKG on site and found that the student was suffering from a very severe heart dysrhythmia that was life-threatening. Had there not been a clinic or a doctor there, that student could have died.”
The Children’s Trust funding and the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation’s continued financial support will allow SHI to serve more patients and grant valuable experience to local pediatricians-in-training.
“We really want to bring in full primary care services to schools while, at the same time, offering our trainees from the pediatric residency program at Jackson Memorial Hospital a unique educational experience,” said Dr. Gwynn. “Our medical students and residents benefit immensely from having SHI as part of their training program.”
Given the program’s long history of success, Dr. Gwynn looks forward to the day when SHI improves the health of students well beyond Miami-Dade.
“We’ve reached a point where we’re expanding beyond what we ever thought we could do,” Dr. Gwynn said. “We’d love to see SHI serve as a national model, bringing these types of services into underserved communities outside of South Florida, in ways that are sensitive to the needs of particular communities.”
Tags: Adolescents, Department of Pediatrics, Dr. Lisa Gwynn, kids health, pediatrics, School Health Initiative
This article was printed from The Miller School of Medicine Medical News
at the following URL: https://news.med.miami.edu/miami-school-health-initiative-to-offer-health-care-to-more-school-kids/
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