February 11, 2003 CHICAGO (AP) -- Health centers in schools can help poor and uninsured children with asthma improve their attendance and stay out of the hospital, a study in New York City found.
The health centers offer care by a pediatrician or nurse practitioner during the school day and backup services after hours through a community health center.
Children with asthma who attended schools without such a center were absent an average of three days more than students at schools with the centers. They were also more likely to end up in the hospital: 17 percent versus 10.5 percent.
"If we can give kids health services where the kids are in the schools, we can potentially reduce much more costly forms of care like hospitalization," said the study's lead author, Mayris Webber of New York's Montefiore Medical Center.
The study was published in this month's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. It was conducted by doctors at Montefiore and at Albert Einstein Medical College and involved 949 asthmatic children at six elementary schools in the Bronx. Four of the schools had health centers.
Webber said the findings would probably apply to children with other chronic diseases, too.
About 1,500 school-based health centers offer services to approximately 1.1 million children nationwide.
"I think it boils down to increasing access of care and maybe seeing the children a little bit earlier when they are sick," said Dr. Sai Nimmagadda at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
