Clinic at school to cater to local area

Forget school nurses. At Sayre Middle School they are going to be a thing of the past.

With the help of Penn's Center for Community Partnerships, Sayre will have its own primary health care clinic -- open to the surrounding community -- within two years.

According to CCP Associate Director Cory Bowman, the clinic will run health and disease-prevention programs, educate both Sayre and Penn students and cater to the Sayre community's needs.

"The idea is that [Penn] and Sayre can both benefit from a hub for health education, referral and health service delivery for the entire community," he said.

The CCP has applied for multiple federal grants of about half a million dollars each. They are intended to pay for remodeling the Sayre building, as well as the clinic's medical, administrative and billing departments.

Bowman said he expects to hear about the grants in June but that the program may have to apply for additional smaller grants as well to secure adequate funding.

According to Penn Associate Dean for Practice and Community Affairs Eileen Sullivan-Marx, the clinic would provide Sayre students and the surrounding community with medical attention it would otherwise not receive from overburdened local health centers.

She added that the center would decrease student absences due to illnesses like the flu and would also closely monitor those suffering from chronic ailments such as asthma and diabetes.

"As far as we know, this will be one of the only school-based and community health clinics that has a core integration with the curriculum of the school and a university," Bowman said.

He added that current school health care clinics around the country have difficulty sustaining themselves.

The facility at Sayre, however, "will be sustainable because it is linked to the core educational mission of [Sayre and Penn] students," Bowman said.

The clinic will also allow Sayre students to actively engage in health care. When Sayre students who work in the clinic grow more familiar with peer education and support, they will counsel patients themselves.

"The most important part of the [clinic will be] helping the students in school become active deliverers of health care and health information," Bowman said.

The clinic will not only be a resource for Sayre students, but for Penn students as well. Medical, Nursing, Dental and Social Work students will learn about health care promotion and delivery by participating in the clinic, Bowman said.

Much of the groundwork toward that objective is already being laid. Currently, students in the School of Medicine perform health screenings for students at Sayre and Dental School students help individuals at Sayre with fillings, root canals and all levels of dental education. Bowman said that he hopes to open up these services to the entire Sayre community over the next two years.

College junior and CCP member Vanessa White said that "the idea is so innovative. Since students and the community will be stakeholders in the clinic," White feels that it will succeed.

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