Jun. 9—oak hill — West Virginia is at the forefront of the nation's school-based health care movement, a national leader said Thursday.

Robert Boyd, president and CEO of the national School-Based Health Alliance (https://www.sbh4all.org/), was the keynote speaker at the West Virginia Primary Care Association's June 8 conference "Innovation, Opportunity, Impact" at the New River Convention Center.

"My overall theme was for the folks in West Virginia to tell their story, and tell it right," said Boyd. He stressed that over 90 percent of the school-based health centers in West Virginia are operated by Federally Qualified Health Centers (one of which is New River Health, the host of Thursday's event). "That's unique; we don't have that kind of a relationship in other states."

The emphasis on school-based health by the FQHCs in the Mountain State "is a model for the rest of the country," Boyd said. "Those FQHCs have grown the number of school-based health centers by 40 percent over the last five years. West Virginia, in many categories, is a leader across the nation in providing school-based health care. Over 90 percent of those school-based health centers serve the entire community, and that's also an exception."

Boyd said he doesn't have a comparison yet on recently released data tracking progress nationally, but "I'm willing to bet they're going to be at the top of many of these categories."

That is in relation to the number of students served per capita, said Paula Fields, vice president of consulting and technical services for the School-Based Health Alliance.

Boyd credited West Virginians with "making do with what they have," admitting sometimes they don't have the resources or time to get out and tell their story.

"Your senator, Shelley Moore Capito, is one of our champions on the Hill," Boyd said. "She has been responsible, along with Sen. Stabenow (Michigan), to getting us the first funding from the federal government for new school-based health centers.

"The goal now is to tell the story. That's what has to happen."

Another topic Boyd touched on in his remarks was the Health Sciences and Technology Academy.

"We're going to feature it at our national conference in Washington at the end of the month. But our goal ultimately is to take a HSTA-type program and replicate that in every state in the country, but with the focus — unlike HSTA that doesn't give a requirement of what the students do after they graduate — a requirement that, if you get free tuition, you come back and work in a Title I school. You come back and bring that nursing degree and be a school nurse. You come back with that behavioral health degree, that counseling degree, and be a counselor in a school-based health center. That's not done with HSTA."

That said, he called HSTA "the most comprehensive, student-focused pipeline opportunity. Because there is no good pipeline for people going into public health today.

"We've got health care shortages all over the place in terms of workforce, in terms of personnel."

Educating students and giving them incentives to come back home to support their home areas is also an avenue to economic development, Boyd stressed. "And that's what we need people to understand, is that school-based health is as much about economic development as it is anything else. Healthy kids grow up to be healthy adults. When they're healthy adults, they're not a drain and a burden on the economy. They can contribute to the economy.

"And, everybody knows, there's all kinds of data out there, healthy kids learn better."

School-based health centers operated by the FQHCs that coordinate care also help build relationships among the schools, the students and their families in the community, according to Boyd and Fields.

Boyd praised comprehensive community-based schools such as nearby Riverside High School in Kanawha County that have resources in place to become "a hub for the community."

He also had kind words for New River Health's recent transformation of existing, unused retail space into its new combo health/convention center. Turning old shopping areas and malls into "facilities like this" is "good, adaptive reuse."

"Part of our goal is to gather face-to-face and, I think, to highlight the great work that has been done throughout our state over time," said John Kennedy, director of school-based and behavioral health services for the sponsoring WVPCA. "But we also want to look to the future and talk about these opportunities, how will they impact and really celebrate the work that is being done.

"We have been apart for a long time (due to Covid-19), so this is our first gathering back together," he added. "So, having some of our partners, the national School-Based Health Alliance and our managed care organizations and our philanthropic, it helps them reconnect so we can continue those relationships."

Clinical sessions Thursday focused on areas such as behavioral health and primary care. Relating to the conference theme of "Innovation, Opportunity, Impact" in regard to school-based health centers, Kennedy said, "We're going to be talking about telehealth and mobile units, which help expand access to care while we also address health equity. Health equity is so important in this time. Covid has really shown us where the health equities are, and we're going to continue to make efforts to address that."

The overarching aim, Kennedy stressed, is improving availability of health care. "Access to care is the primary goal, and as we do that, when we go and take more services to where people are, we're able to address the transportation issues and the inability of many people to actually get to medical clinics.

"So, whether it's school-based health or an increase in mobile units or telehealth, we're able to help the most under-served receive services."

According to most recent numbers available to the WVPCA, 81 percent of the state's community health centers offer school-based health services to students in 219 locations across the state and border communities. SBHCs partner with elementary, intermediate and high schools in 44 of West Virginia's 55 counties, and nearly 49,000 students visited a center in their community during the most recent period for which figures are available.

Community health centers have also been able to expand and diversify behavioral health care offerings both on-site and through telehealth services, the WVPCA notes.

A mobile health care provider who was on hand for the Thursday sessions was Sarah Buch, a Woodrow Wilson High School graduate who was involved in HSTA and now works as a health care provider in the Kanawha Valley.

"I got involved in HSTA in high school," she said. That helped her attract scholarship aid to pursue post-secondary educational opportunities, and she later worked HSTA summer camps.

Buch studied in the Alderson-Broaddus physician assistant undergraduate program and later received her doctorate in medical science at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee.

With a goal of remaining active in primary care in her home state, she works with St. Albans-based FamilyCare Health Centers, which services four different schools in that area. Buch is active with a mobile unit, one of four offered by FamilyCare in Putnam, Kanawha and Boone counties. The vehicle is a 38-foot RV that has been converted into a medical mobile unit, she explained. "I drive it; my nurse drives it."

Health care delivery in their scenario is primarily school-related, then outreach to family members is provided when possible. "We do have a couple brick-and-mortar locations ... that do school-based health and community (health)."

About Thursday's conference, Buch said, "This is wonderful, especially being in our back yard. It's nice to be able to meet a bunch of different offices and groups ... and gain knowledge and different ways to do things and different ways for outreach from all sorts of different locations."

The event was catered by Nathan Thomas, of Hungry Bear Catering of Fayetteville.

For more on the WV Primary Care Association, visit www.wvpca.org.

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