MSU considers adding health services to residence halls

Health advice soon could be only an e-mail away or a few steps down the hall for students as officials consider placing services in residential neighborhoods.

A memo was sent last week to university officials addressing student health services and Olin Health Center. It included a recommendation to deliver health and wellness services to students in their dorm neighborhoods.

Nurse-run clinics, nutrition services and teams of health care officials to consult and advise on topics such as exercise programs are being considered, said James Hillard, associate provost for human health affairs.

“The whole thing is about trying to offer services in a variety of different ways that are user friendly,” he said.

Hillard said university officials are looking beyond traditional ways of delivering health care, including offering after-hours and weekend services. Students also might be able to use the Internet to communicate with doctors’ offices by sending an e-mail describing symptoms, Hillard said.

Neighborhoods might have access to teams of health officials, he said.

“(An idea is) to have each residential area have a team that they can access for different kinds of problems … so it’s a little easier talking about things that might be … embarrassing,” Hillard said.

The neighborhoods will not be in place until 2011, but some of the concepts could be implemented before then, Hillard said.

“If we come up with some stuff that would be great to have that we could implement sooner than that, we wouldn’t want to just put it off,” he said.

Integrating services is part of the focus, Hillard said.

“What it is that’s currently being done in Olin … which of those things could be done in the residential neighborhoods?” he said.

Olin Director Glynda Moorer said plans for how to deliver services have not been established.

“I have just received this memo and we are still discussing the possible interpretations of what this could mean,” she said in an e-mail.

Models will have to be developed and tested on campus before specific details are implemented and questions are answered, Senior Associate Provost June Youatt said.

“If you were going to provide a set of services in neighborhoods, what would that set of services look like?” she said.

Hillard said student input in a variety of forms probably will be gathered in early 2010.

“Health is something that everybody cares about,” Hillard said. “What you don’t want to do is make a whole bunch of changes without communication.”