Starting next month, students throughout Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) will be able to access health services in a new way.

Earlier this fall, TCAPS announced plans to launch the TCAPS Child and Adolescent Health Center, a health clinic based on the campus at West Middle School and operated by Northwest Michigan Health Services Inc. (NMHSI). According to Nancy White, a past chief operating officer for NMHSI and the project manager for the TCAPS health center, the clinic is slated to open “by the middle of November.”

Ginger Smith, executive director of marketing and communications for TCAPS, describes the new health center as “a school-based clinic…open to all TCAPS students regardless of income,” with all forms of insurance accepted. The project is funded by a grant from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and its Child & Adolescent Health Center Program.

“The purpose is to provide families with an easy way to receive both physical and behavioral health care,” Smith tells The Ticker. For years, she says, student medical appointments have posed challenges for TCAPS and its families. “Parents have to leave work, and students miss out on school time due to added travel,” she says of student appointments, adding that staying up to date on medical care is particularly challenging for TCAPS families “who have transportation or financial limitations.” She cited that similar issues last month when The Ticker inquired about declining immunization rates at some local schools.

The addition of the health center, Smith says, will help address those issues “by providing an added option for families.” It's not a total sea change, though: Smith stresses that “the program does not replace the TCAPS school nurses,” and that parents “must opt in to care provided by NMHSI” before their kids can utilize health center services.

TCAPS has crews finishing renovations on an out building at West Middle School. Once complete, that  will become home to the TCAPS Child and Adolescent Health Center. The new facility will have its own dedicated entrance and parking area, separate from existing West Middle School infrastructure, and will be open to all TCAPS students and families, at all grade levels – not just those who attend West Middle School.

While a school-based health clinic is a new thing for TCAPS, the concept isn’t new.

“There are dozens in the state, and even more across the country,” White says. “Healthy kids learn better, plain and simple, and there is a lot of data to suggest that these health centers make a difference on that front. So, the goal is to keep kids in the classroom and provide the services they need to stay healthy.”

There are multiple prongs to what students will be able to access at the TCAPS health center. The one White says has gotten the most attention so far is behavioral health. Starting next month, the center will give students access to a full-time licensed counselor, on hand from 8am-4:30pm Monday through Friday to take appointments. Behavioral health care and other health center services will also remain accessible during school breaks – including over the summer – and the clinic will have on-call options for needs that arise outside of typical business hours.

Based on paperwork filed with TCAPS by families seeking to access services, White predicts behavioral health will be the core draw of the new facility.

“I can just tell that these are families that want behavioral health services,” she says. “It’s clear just from looking at the medications the students are on, or from the medical history notes families are including. These are not people who are looking for vaccines; they’re looking for mental health services. There is clearly a huge, huge need.”

Mental health concerns have grown considerably among youth and adolescent populations in the past two decades, with experts linking the increase to everything from social media to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality indicates that nearly 20 percent of Americans in the 3-17 age range “have a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder,” and that “suicidal behaviors among high school students increased more than 40 percent in the decade before 2019.”

In preparing to launch the TCAPS health center, White paid a visit to a similar school-based health clinic serving Baldwin Community Schools in Baldwin, Michigan. “They have two big full-time behavioral people on staff, and they told me they could probably use two more right away,” she says. “And their population is so much smaller than here.”

The new TCAPS health center will also include a medical health services arm. That part of the center isn’t expected to open until January, but will offer students and their families access to a physician assistant three days a week. That person will be able to triage illnesses, injuries, and other medical issues, potentially saving families a trip to the hospital or the doctor’s office. Other services will include immunizations, vision and hearing screenings, annual physical exams, sports physicals, assistance with minor athletic injuries, asthma action planning, and more.

TCAPS and NMHSI are still ironing out a few final details – such as transportation for students who need to get to West Middle School from other schools in the district. Overall, though, White says things are just about ready to go.

“This is our second school-based center,” White says. “We been open for three years in the Manistee school system, and we’ve learned and grown so much from that. So, we know how to do this well, and are looking forward to doing it in Traverse City. We’ve already met with close to 1,400 kids through orientation, a health fair, and all kinds of events at the different schools, and our plan is really just to go in with open arms to help these kids, in whatever way we can.”

Pictured: West Middle School