Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Freitag, a founding and 30-year member of the Strafford Area Lions Club. Before retiring in 2016, he was for 33 years the facilities manager at the Newton Elementary School in South Stafford.
[S]chool-based health clinics was the inspiring topic of the April dinner meeting of the Strafford Area Lions Club. The clinic at the Newton School in South Strafford has served the children and/or grandchildren of many of those at the meeting. What made the evening extra special was that one of the speakers was pediatrician Sam MacWilliams, who had attended the Newton Elementary School, and who has now come back to serve the children of the community where he was raised.
Dr. Sam, as he likes to be called, explained that the school-based health clinics, known as HealthHubs, are the brainchild of Dr. Rebecca Foulk. Dr. Foulk, who practices at the South Royalton Health Center and continues to serve as the medical director of the HealthHubs, obtained a grant in the 1990s from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to start these school-based clinics. Over time, the HealthHubs have expanded to include school clinics in South Royalton, Strafford, Chelsea, Sharon, Bethel, Tunbridge, Orange, Washington, Stockbridge, Rochester and Williamstown.
School-based health clinic have many benefits. Parents save time not having to leave work to get prompt treatment for their children and students and teachers benefit by having more class time because appointments are scheduled in coordination with the student’s schedule. It is estimated that the average in-school visit saves parents two hours of travel and work time, while reducing lost time for students and teacher by 1½ hours. Having a health care professional regularly in the school and able to provide accurate information to children in a timely and friendly manner is a further asset for all.
Services the school-based clinics and their mobile dental trailer provide include basic medical, dental and mental health services. A more detailed listing of their services can be found at their website.
Besides having Dr. Sam as the school pediatrician, other retired health care providers living in Strafford are volunteering their time. Retired pediatrician Dr. Robert Klein, who many years ago helped to train Dr. Foulk and serves on the HealthHub board of directors, spoke at the meeting. As an asthma specialist, he has put together an asthma protocol for treating this disease that afflicts roughly one in 10 Vermonters. Recently retired dentist Dr. John Echternach spoke about low cost cavity treatments long being done in Europe and Japan that he used in his New Hampshire practice and that are now being considered for implementation here in Vermont. HealthHubs receive most of their funding from insurance reimbursements and fundraising.
At a time when there is concern and difficulties with top-down driven solutions to problems, homegrown responses to needs like the school-based clinics may provide alternatives worthy of consideration. The Strafford Area Lions Club was certainly impressed and voted at the dinner meeting to give a check for $500 from their funds to the HealthHubs.
