We Don’t Need More Clinics in Schools
Do health clinics belong in public schools? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the idea hasn’t taken hold in Missouri as it has in Illinois:
The Metro East area has two of these high school clinics, the one in East St. Louis and another in Cahokia.
In contrast, the whole state of Missouri has just three, according to the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care, a nonprofit group in Washington.
Providing preventative health care to poor children is imperative, but attaching the service to public schools is the wrong way to go. The existing system of public schools excacerbates disparities in education, because the children with the fewest choices are stuck in the worst schools. If a child’s health care provider also depends on his address, we’ll have greater health care injustice.
