“It goes way beyond a nurse’s office,” McNall said. “There is (a health care center) located in Otto Middle School (in Lansing), and I walked in, and it looked exactly like the doctor’s office that I typically go into to get my own health care.”

Contacted by the manager of the Adolescent and School Health Unit of the Michigan Department of Community Health, or MDCH, in 2008, McNall started surveying middle and high school students to determine the health benefits of school-based health care centers and the students that were using them.

“It’s a highly convenient setting for (students) to access the services,” McNall said. “They’re right there in their school, where kids spend the majority of their waking hours for nine months of the year. It’s a terrific way to make regular health care service available to a wide range of children.”

The health care centers typically are placed in rural, urban low-income areas, or areas where children have historically been under-served in health care.

The state supports 68 health care centers across Michigan, said Taggert Doll, the Child and Adolescent Health Center program coordinator for the MDCH. A school-based health care center can be established with state and community support, and the local support must match at least 30 percent of state funding in order for the center to operate.

“Healthy children learn better,” Doll said. “These programs are designed to provide comprehensive primary care on site or off school property.”

McNall’s research was an opportunity for decision-makers to rate the effectiveness of these centers, said Patricia Farrell, the former assistant director of MSU’s Families and Communities Together Coalition.

“From (McNall’s) research, he was able to show a great impact,” Farrell said. “It’s just amazing how centers really do help. They help not only with the adolescents, but they help with the faculty and staff.”

The centers are not just for immediate health care, but to help students continue healthy behaviors, Farrell said.

“The school clinics don’t just stay in one room, the staff is out in the building,” Farrell said. “The message of health is spread throughout the building. That positive outreach effort is what really makes a school-based health clinic successful, because they don’t just deal with students that come into their office, but they go out into classrooms and do presentations on health issues, they might do planning with people that plan meals to make better choices in the cafeteria, and so on.”

The health care centers have proven their need in communities, Doll said.

“We had a student that was having a routine physical in the health center for sports,” Doll said. “They had physicals in the past, (but) they had not been comprehensive physicals. This was the first time they had a physical in the health center and the nurse practitioner listened to his heart and saw that there was a problem and referred them to a cardiologist. They ended up having heart surgery. The nurse practitioner really did uncover this problem and it’s possible she saved this kid’s life.”