ITHACA, N.Y. – In a rural region of upstate New York, students attending schools with nonprofit-run health clinics received more medical care, relied less on urgent care, and missed less school, according to an analysis led by Cornell University researchers. The case study adds to evidence that school-based health centers can improve children’s health care and provide broader benefits to rural communities, the researchers said.
“You get better provision of health care service in those schools with a school-based clinic,” said John Sipple, professor of global development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Basic access to care is up, in terms of the number of times children are seen, attendance is higher and absenteeism is reduced.”
Sharon Tennyson, professor in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, is the first author of “School-Based Health Centers and Rural Community Health,” published in the journal Community Development.
The team led by Tennyson and Sipple analyzed a rural region of four adjacent counties – Chenango, Delaware, Otsego and Schoharie – where Bassett Healthcare Network ran clinics in schools in more than a dozen districts. Using 2017 data from Bassett, they compared those students to more than 7,000 peers in neighboring districts that did not have school-based clinics. The results showed that students with access to clinics at school made two additional office visits per year; were significantly less likely to seek emergency care; and were about 10 percentage points more likely to receive a routine checkup and an immunization.
The data suggests school-based health centers improved access to preventive care by locating it where children are each day and removing cost barriers, the researchers said. School-based health centers “may benefit both schools and communities by addressing an important set of rural challenges,” the authors concluded, and “have potential to serve a key role in local rural community development.”
For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.
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