When one of Juanita Jones’ children gets sick, it means a $30 ride to the emergency room. When she runs out of her blood pressure medication, she can wait weeks for a refill.
Jones is counting the days until a new health clinic opens this month right inside her children’s south Atlanta elementary school.
“I’m going to be one of the first patients,” she said.
The new clinic, in a former classroom at Dobbs Elementary School, is part of a rapid expansion of school-based health centers in Georgia and nationally.
New clinics are scheduled to open at Atlanta’s Dobbs and Miles Elementary schools this year. A third clinic at Hollis Innovation Academy, which replaced Bethune Elementary, could be in the works.
Local nonprofit Whitefoord Inc. will open a clinic at Atlanta’s King Middle School this fall and plans to offer some health care services at D.H. Stanton Elementary School next year. And more communities statewide are planning for their own school clinics to serve students and staff and, eventually, the entire neighborhood.
The number of health clinics inside Georgia schools has risen eight-fold since 2010.
“School-based health centers eliminate every barrier to health care that you can think of,” said Dr. Veda Johnson, who has led Emory University’s work to expand the clinics statewide. “It’s an idea whose time has come in the state of Georgia.”
