SEATTLE — A longtime benefit for families in King County returns this fall as thousands of children return to school in Washington.
King County's "school-based health centers," or SBHCs, will open its doors once again to provide comprehensive health care for enrolled students, for free.
"This doesn't replace a community provider's office but it can complement and support that," said Sara Rigel, a health services administrator for Public Health - Seattle & King County.
KING 5 sat down with the providers ahead of back-to-school season to recap what the service provides and what will be new this year.
Rigel said there are 37 SBHCs in King County-area elementary, middle and high schools where students can get a wide range of health services in the comfort of their own school. This page lists all participating schools.
SBHCs are overseen and funded by Public Health - Seattle & King County and operated by nine different healthcare providers, according to Rigel. Funding, in part, comes from King County's Best Starts for Kids initiative. The first SBHC opened in 1989 at Rainier Beach High School.
SBHCs serve more than 8,000 students and provide over 40,000 healthcare visits each year, according to the program's website.
"The impetus behind all of that was thinking about how students need to be supported to be healthy and ready to learn," Rigel said.
Unlike a typical school nurse's office, where a nurse might tend to a student who feels ill or administer prescriptions to students, SBHCs offer comprehensive care such as well-child exams, immunizations, sports physicals, confidential services like reproductive health and substance abuse treatment, and mental health counseling.
"A lot of students really rely on us," said Kelsey Walch, a physician assistant based at the SBHC in Renton High School.
Walch has worked at SBHCs for six years and has seen mental health services needs in particular, grow during the pandemic.
"We have psychologists at each one of our school-based clinics and they can talk to them about anything they need," Walch said.
First announced in March, King County, in partnership with the philanthropy the Ballmer Group, is investing $2.4 million toward expanding mental health services at the clinics through 2025.
"Coming out of the pandemic, we know that there are more kids both young children and older adolescents that are feeling higher rates of distress, depression and anxiety," Rigel said.
The SBHCs also provide much-needed convenience for working families.
"So families don't have to take their kids out of school, families don't have to leave work to take their kids to the doctor's office," Rigel said.