FAIRFIELD — Shannon King is a Benton resident these days, but she knows Fairfield and its schools. Her parents went to Lawrence High, and so did she, her husband and her sons.

In her time as adolescent-health coordinator for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, King realized that her community would benefit from a school-based health center.

After she retired, she and a few other area residents gradually worked toward that goal, and with success. Lawrence High School’s health center is now slated to open in the fall, in a classroom next to the school nurse’s office, said principal Dan Bowers.

“It’s exciting. It’s one more thing that we can give to kids and I’m looking forward to finally getting it in place and organized and opened up this year,” Bowers said.

The school is currently renovating the space. The center will offer students and staff primary care services, including sports physicals, treatment of minor illnesses, and management of chronic conditions.

HealthReach Community Health Centers, a Waterville-based organization which operates about a dozen of them in Western and Central Maine, will operate the facility at Lawrence High School like any of its others — meaning that HealthReach funds it, rather than the school district.

A community health center at Lawrence High School is slated to open in the fall. Contributed photo

The center is not intended to replace school nurses, but to work together with existing medical staff. It aims to minimize the amount of school time students miss due to illness or injury.

HealthReach will take insurance for its services, and plans to offer sliding-scale payment options.

The organization has hired Katie Gillihan, a family nurse practitioner, to run the center. She is a HealthReach employee and is not on the district’s payroll. Gillihan will be aided by Amanda Cahoon, a medical assistant.

“We put a bathroom in there, two exam rooms, and then we’ll have a reception area where Katie will deal with the kids when they come in,” Bowers said.

The plan is for Gillihan to be at Lawrence two days a week from 8 a.m. until noon, but those hours could expand in the future. The phone line to schedule appointments will be open Monday through Friday during business hours.

“It’s been an amazing collaboration with some community members who started this at a grassroots level, and then personnel from the school and staff,” said Connie Coggins, HealthReach CEO. 

The concept behind school-based health centers is to eliminate the barriers that prevent kids from accessing primary care. “The idea is to embed that and make it convenient for students and their parents,” Coggins said.

“Some jobs don’t allow parents to leave work for medical visits for their kids,” Shannon King explained. “So I just think it’s a win-win all around.”

The Maine Center for Disease Control provides funding to 15 school-based health centers in the state, said George Shaler, who works with the MCDC to give school clinics technical assistance and provide professional development services. Shaler said he doesn’t know exactly how many school-based health centers exist in Maine because only the state-funded ones are required to be in touch with him, but he estimates that it’s about 20. Compared to other states, Shaler said Maine is probably in the middle of the pack.

“Maine doesn’t have all that many school-based health centers, compared to the number of high schools that we have. Which is kind of a shame, because personally I think every school should have a school-based health center,” King said.

“Ensuring that all kids have access to comprehensive primary health care is to give all kids a fair shot at staying in school and being ready to learn” said parent Elayne Richards. “When that happens, our community is a better place.”