Health Connection for School Success

The project had three core goals:

• To provide transportation to and from health services to at risk children and their families so they can access preventive health, dental, and/or specialty care
• To offer comprehensive health education services to families on parenting, dental health, HIV awareness, blood pressure training, and volunteerism
• To maintain the viability of and linkages within the Lee County Primary Prevention Coalition (PPC)

The HCFSS outreach driver visited families at their homes. This approach was necessary because as much as 16 percent of the target population was without a vehicle, and 19 percent did not have a telephone. The outreach driver initiated contact with families who needed services and assisted them by scheduling appointments, driving clients to and from appointments, and providing information on health and community service programs that were available to meet the families’ needs. During the school year, HCFSS transported children from school to their appointments, which helped limit the amount of time they were away from school.

The project’s community health coordinator was primarily responsible for distributing a health book titled “What To Do When Your Child Gets Sick,” which was written at a fourth grade reading level. The health book was designed to assist parents and children in addressing basic health needs. To receive a copy, people were required to attend a short workshop that provided basic instruction on how to use the book effectively. Initially, it was difficult to identify channels for disseminating the book. In the project’s final year, however, HCFSS worked with the Department of Social Services and the local Women, Infants, and Children program to get more parents to participate in the workshop.

Given the dire need for dental health care in the county, the community health coordinator worked with the Health Reach Program to launch an oral health initiative. In addition, the faith community coordinator was responsible for training a health volunteer advocacy group, including representatives from area churches, to help address community health needs through parenting workshops, healthy lifestyle workshops, HIV education, blood pressure training, and teen pregnancy prevention. However, since Lee County communities continue to be largely divided along racial and ethnic lines, the faith community coordinator, who was African American, was not generally well received or accepted by white churches. As a result, 90 percent of the health workshops were conducted in African American churches.

The transportation component of the project will continue, and the outreach driver and administrative assistant positions will continue to be funded by HCFSS so that medical appointments can be scheduled and children can be transported to them. However, due to a lack of funding resources, the health education and health promotion components cannot be sustained.