What’s Right With Our Schools: Erlanger Clinic at Howard School
CHATTANOOGA, TN (WDEF) – Attendance plays a crucial role in a student’s academic success. That starts with keeping kids healthy. Howard School is home to a new clinic that’s designed to do just that. It’s a robust example of what’s right with our schools.
Dr. LeAndrea Ware is the Executive Principal at Howard.
She exclaims, “Today is another phenomenal day here at the amazing Howard School. The opening of the first ever onsite school health clinic and what that means for our students and our families. We all know chronic absenteeism can be a huge deterrent for academic excellence in a school, and so when we can have the clinic here on site and we’re able to service our students to keep them healthy; to provide the information and education so that they can also help their families stay healthy and know how to access health care. That is, that’s just phenomenal for us.”
Shannon Moody is the Chief Strategy Officer for HCDE.
Moody says, “The Howard community, this community, is such a wonderful Community. They have many, many students here. They’re a thriving place to be. So, we wanted to make sure that this was a good fit, right. That we had a lot of students that we could serve. That it’s in a space where our students could be impacted by the work as well. So, the location also kind of proved itself to be a perfect location with a door external to the community. Our hope is that actually, we can work this up where we’re not just seeing students, but we’re seeing families as well, and we work through those pieces so that we can serve the entire community here in this central location.”
Ken Jones is the Board Chairman for Erlanger Community Health Centers.
He explains, ” We have an RN nurse that’s here all the time, and then we have doctors as needed that come through and support and make sure that our students get the care that they need. It’s literally that simple, right? So, let’s say if a kid comes to school and their mom or their grandmother is not feeling well, and they know that right? Well let’s bring Mom, let’s bring grandmother, let’s bring daddy, let’s bring um granddaddy, let’s bring brother, sister. Hey, you can come right here; get seen by quality health care physicians, nurses, and see, you know, find out what’s going on what’s happening>
He continues, “And some people may say, ‘Well, I don’t have insurance, or I have very little insurance.'”
Jones concludes, “Guess what? That’s what we’re here for. That’s what the federally qualified health centers are all about is making sure that we can serve people whether you have insurance or not. So, don’t let that stop you. Just come out and see one of our nurses and see one of our doctors and get the health care you deserve.”
Principal Moody chips in, “That’s another great reason here at Howard too, is there’s a partnership with Erlanger where they’re doing nursing program um within our Career and Technical education programs and Future Ready institutes. So, we have many students that are actually exploring nursing programs and have opportunity to do work-based learning. While we don’t have that setup here at the clinic now, it’s been something that we’ve been talking about. As we’ve been setting this up and dreaming about figuring out the steps we need to take so that students can actually get real practical work experience in a functioning Clinic here at school without ever having to leave campus is going to help us with attendance.”
