Wellness Center report cards show improvements
School-based administrators, clinicians, and student health advocates from Los Angeles school-based Wellness Centers shared best practices for student health.
This past October The L.A. Trust hosted the Wellness Network Learning Collaborative conference at the California Endowment in Downtown Los Angeles. It was the first in-person conference in two years, and administrators, clinicians, and student health advocates were excited to see each other away from the computer monitor. The semi-annual event focused on sharing best practices for increasing student health across L.A. Unified.
Spotlight on SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment)
The highlight of the Learning Collaborative featured Dr. Barth-Rogers, chief medical officer of the UMMA Wellness Center at Fremont High School in South Los Angeles. She provided an update on the UMMA Clinic’s best practices in harm-reduction and incorporating SBIRT through the Wellness & Adolescent Substance Use Prevention (WASUP) Project. Dr. Barth-Rogers said, “I think collecting the data is one of the most challenging aspects of the screening process, and we are still improving.” She continued, “At UMMA, it's really important for us as an organization to have accurate and reliable data, and we are constantly monitoring the data to make improvements.”
Wellness Center Report Cards
L.A. Unified’s Dr. Ron Tanimura, Director of Student Medical Services, provided an update on the 17 Wellness Centers with an aggregated report card that showed a 63% increase in overall student visits. Each Wellness Center representative pored over reports on their Wellness Centers’ data provided by The L.A. Trust’s Data xChange for the school year 2021-2022. Data included statistics on unique patient visits, services provided, demographics and more. Dr. Tanimura led the discussion on Wellness Center metrics and discussed the history and future of the Wellness Network. He thanked The L.A. Trust for gathering and presenting these metrics and emphasized the importance of reliable data. “We can’t tell a story without this type of data.”
Feedback and discussion on the Wellness Report Cards was led by LAUSD’s Gloria Velasquez, Organization Facilitator for Student Medical Services and Alex Zepeda, Senior Data & Research Analyst at the L.A. Trust. Marsha Ellis, Director of Programs from The L.A. Trust and Victor Luna, Organization Facilitator, LAUSD helped round out the meeting by clarifying the process for the School Integration Tool.
Moving Forward
Senior Policy Manager, Gabby Tilley brought some clarity on the legislative landscape for school-based health centers. Maryjane Puffer, Executive Director for The L.A. Trust, provided updates on what to expect in the coming months with ongoing initiatives, including the Youth Mental Health Collaborative, Data xChange expansion, Rapid Adolescent Prevention Screening (RAAPS) and the Oral Health Initiative.
Attendees were excited to see friends and colleagues in person after more than two years. The group came together for student health and were inspired by the work that has been done and invigorated by the work that still needs to be done. We look forward to the next Wellness Network Learning Collaborative in June 2023. See you there!