The Baltimore City Council showed wisdom when it voted recently to restore funding for health centers in the city's public schools. Few investments are more beneficial in terms of preventing illness and making schools more conducive to learning. Fully funding the health centers is also an excellent way to welcome Baltimore's new health commissioner, who established her reputation running the health department for New York's 1.1 million-student school system.
Funding for the city's 13 school health centers will come in part from additional revenue raised from new taxes. Council members reportedly were taken aback at the impending cuts once public protests by parents and school officials made it clear how many families looked to the centers as the primary health care providers for their school-age children. At the City Springs Elementary School, for example, more than 90 percent of the students were registered to receive care at the health center.
The school's certified nurse practitioner offered regular treatment for a variety of chronic ailments, including asthma, a serious respiratory disorder that can cause coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath. It is thought to be linked, among other things, to the poor air quality, high ozone levels and traffic pollution found in many poor city neighborhoods, and school-age children are especially vulnerable to attacks that can wreak havoc with a student's ability to learn.
Parents also look to the school health center to provide more routine care, such as immunizations, prescriptions and other medical services that go beyond the minimal checks offered in basic school health suites, which are usually staffed by nursing assistants rather than CNPs.
Children can't succeed in school if they're ill or in pain, but for many low-income families the only alternative to school health centers is the hospital emergency room. Emergency room visits are expensive, time consuming and no substitute for the kind of primary medical care that helps young people avoid medical crises before they develop.
That's something Baltimore's new health commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, is well aware of, having served for the past seven years as medical director of New York City's Office of School Health, where she was in charge of setting health policy for the nation's largest school system. Ms. Barbot's first day on the job will be Aug. 23.
Her New York experience included coordinating the school system's response to the H1N1 flu epidemic and creating an electronic medical records system for all the city's students. The Obama administration has made computerizing medical records a cornerstone of its health care reform effort to bring down costs, and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake clearly hopes Ms. Barbot can help the city upgrade its own record-keeping capabilities.
Ms. Barbot was also known for her work in minority communities to reduce health disparities between poor students and their more affluent peers, and she developed a program to improve care for 40,000 students with asthma. She also took an expansive view of assessing students' health needs that encompassed such social factors as gun and domestic violence, diet and nutrition and access to care.
These are all experiences that should serve Ms. Barbot well in her job as the city's new health commissioner and allow her to carry to completion the pioneering reforms begun by her predecessor, Joshua Sharfstein, who left the post last year to become principal deputy commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The health of its citizens, especially its young people, is one of the most important investments Baltimore can make in its future. Given Ms. Barbot's stellar record of innovating leadership and accomplishment, the city should be in good hands on her watch.