A conference highlights two decades of the centers and health leaders speak on the importance.
ACME -- School based health clinics have been around the state for two decades, providing services for students. In celebration of the facilities, school and health leaders held a conference at the Grand Traverse Resort Monday.
And with the celebration comes a closer look at the programs by tracking current trends and offering ways to improve the healthcare clinics.
"There are 57 school based health centers throughout Michigan. We're talking about all the issues that we deal with everyday, adolescent and child health issues and getting a refreshing update on the latest in healthcare," says adolescent health coordinator with the Grand Traverse County Health Department, Lisa Peacock.
It's health leaders who stress the growing need of the facilities providing everything from immunizations to mental health services.
"The kids themselves are now understanding healthcare and why it's important a little better and will come in for things or come in and ask us for some testing on their own," says nurse practitioner with the Ironmen Health Center in Mancelona, Tammy Hickman.
Hickman says the clinic in Mancelona is noticing increasing amounts of students using its services.
"We have a mandate of a certain number of new clients we need to see every year and we easily have passed that point," says Hickman.
In other school districts like Kalkaska, it's much the same situation.
"We saw over 500 kids last year and in a town like Kalkaska that's pretty impressive...We do large immunization drives each year for Forest Area and Kalkaska public school. But we also see kids for sick care, we see a lot of kids coming in for mental health services," says health outreach worker for the Teen Health Corner in Kalkaska, Elizabeth Schwind.
Both women agree that having the student based health facilities provides necessary benefits for their communities.
"We have a lot of kids especially in Mancelona and Antrim Counties, it's very hard economically there and a lot of kids would not access the healthcare that we offer unless there was something like this available...We've helped many kids be able to get insurance but it's the convenience for many families," says Hickman.
"So many of the our kids don't have all the resources that they should have in order to receive proper healthcare...and by having a center that is close to school or accessible to the kids at school it makes it a lot easier to get them to where they need to be," says Schwind.
For information on how you can locate a school based health center in your area you can check out: www.michigan.gov/cahc
