The Sayre Health Center and Board

The Sayre Health Center is a non-profit corporation founded by the Sayre Community Health Advisory Council, with support from the Department of Family Medicien and Community Health, and Center for Community Partnerships (CCP) for the purpose of opening a health center in the Sayre School for the surrounding community.  The Council has representatives from the Sayre School, the local community, the University of Pennsylvania, and numerous community organizations.  In addition to the Health Center initiative, the Council sponsors a unique, national award winning university-community partnership focusing on school and community health that has developed a wide range of programs offering academic, recreational, cultural, and health services to all members of the community.  These programs emphasize students as deliverers of service, not just recipients, and being producers of knowledge and solutions to problems, not just consumers.  The Council’s goal is to integrate health promotion activities with the school’s educational programs.  For all of its eight-year history, the Council has been working toward building a school based health center (SBHC) at Sayre High School.   The new Board of the Sayre Health Center has seven members from the Community, 3 from the Sayre High School and 4 from the University, including Dr. Margo.  It is co-chaired by Dr. Bernett Johnson (see p. 17) and the school Principal Joseph Starinieri.

The Sayre Health Center mission statement, which has been approved by the new Board of Directors, is: Provide high quality, culturally-sensitive, accessible school-based primary and preventive health care services to the under-served community surrounding the William L. Sayre School of the School District of Philadelphia; and Provide health services education for both Sayre students and University of Pennsylvania students, through participation in the provision of health care services.

The Sayre Health Center will serve a socio-economically distressed inner-city area of Philadelphia surrounding the School designated both as a Medically Underserved (MUC) and a Primary Care Health Professions Shortage Area (HPSA). The target population is the low-income Sayre students and their families. Over 85% of Sayre students come from low-income families.   The Sayre Health Center, a nonprofit organization has applied for School Based Federally Qualified Health Center funding and is investigating with the help of CCP and Dr. B/ernett Johnson other avenues of funding should the HRSA funding not be approved. 

The Sayre Health Center will be located in a newly renovated area of the High School and will be open 40 hours per week, including at least 30 hours of day and evening clinic time, with the additional time being dedicated to health education activities in the school and community.  The Sayre Health Center expects to provide 5,250 service encounters to 2100 patients per year once at full capacity.  Additional volunteer physicians, residents, and medical students will supplement these services with health education and screening clinics. Sayre students will participate in service planning, provision and oversight.   The Board has expressed great enthusiasm about the goals of our grant.

The Sayre Health Center will work with a school-based health promotion and disease prevention model to provide sensitive, accessible services that focus on health education and are tied to the educational missions of both Sayre School and Penn.  Comprehensive services will be provided and/or arranged for patients across the lifecycles as well as “Information Prescription” (“Ix”) activities. In addition to all required primary and preventive services, the Health Center will provide emergency; diagnostic, immunization; family planning; Ob-Gyn; well-child; hearing, vision, and dental screening; cancer and other disease and risk screening; and pharmacy services; as well as dental services.  In addition, outreach, eligibility assistance, and case management will be provided.

Medical students will be involved at Sayre during their Family Medicine clerkship, Summer Assistantship, Scholarly Pursuits, and individual community medicine projects.

There are clinical rotations for students:

1. As a LEAPP site for Module 3 students
2. As a clinical location for Family Medicine 201
3. As clinical site for sub-internships or externships in Family Medicine
4. As a scholarly purstui site.

Students who participate in the Community Medicine Certificate and the Community Medicine Summer Assistantship are given priority in site selection for Sayre.

URL

http://sayrehealth.org/

Ground Breaking for Sayre Health Center: March 31, 2007