A new school-based wellness center located between St. Rose Elementary and Albert Cammon Middle School will provide nearby students medical and dental care with no out of pocket cost to their parents.
Services ranging from check-ups to immunizations to mental health counseling will be offered at the Albert Cammon Wellness Center, which will have a full-time certified nurse practitioner, a medical assistant and a licensed social worker on staff. There are also plans to bring in a dentist to treat patients once or twice each month.
“This is really a state-of-the-art facility,” Yvonne Gaspard, the center’s director, said. “I feel so strongly about this facility being about the children and providing quality healthcare to them.”
The center, which has three patient rooms, a dental room with two chairs and a room for individual and group counseling, is sponsored by the St. Charles Community Health Center in partnership with St. Charles Parish Public Schools and the state Office of Public Health’s Adolescent School Health Program. Gaspard, who worked for 36 years as an educator, began studying the feasibility of having a school-based health center two years ago.
“Now St. Charles Community Health Center has a clinic in Norco, but there isn’t really anything else around health wise for these students,” she said. “I know first hand the quality of nursing and counseling that we have in our school system, but there was a need to expand what is already offered.”
Gaspard said nurses aren’t allowed to distribute off the counter medication in a school setting and are prohibited from giving immunizations as well. Albert Cammon Wellness Center will also be able to offer preventative care instead of just seeing students when they are sick.
“This is a total collaboration between the staff at the wellness center and the nurses and counselors at the two schools,” she said.
Only students at Albert Cammon and St. Rose will be able to use the center, and a spot between the two schools was chosen because it fit the strict criteria that a school-based health clinic must meet.
“It had to be based at a middle school and it had to be able to service 700 children,” Gaspard said. “That’s why this spot was chosen. Albert Cammon doesn’t meet the 700 children criteria, but when you add St. Rose to the equation, you have almost 900 students nearby who can take advantage of the wellness center.”
The building was called a wellness center instead of a health center because it will also help students learn skills for healthy living and educate them on the dangers of childhood obesity and other health problems.
Parents must agree to allow their children to be treated at the wellness center and Gaspard said she has already gotten 25 percent of them to do so.
“Those parents have already filled out several forms, which included a medical history of the student,” she said. “The good thing about that is once we load the medical records into our system, the students can be treated at the St. Charles Community Health Center clinics in Norco, Luling or Kenner.”
Gaspard said that’s important because the wellness center is only open from 7:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. when school is in session. However, if a student is in the system, they can visit the health centers during holidays, weekends or in the summer.
The center cost around $300,000 each year to operate, an amount covered by state funding, as well as Medicaid and private insurance.
Prescriptions can be written by the certified nurse practitioner, but no money will change hands at the center. All billing will be taken care of by the St. Charles Community Health Center.
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