Foothill Community Health Center hopes to open clinic at P.A. Walsh
Published in the February 3-16, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Photo by Marty Cheek
Dental Hygienist Lilliana Romine examines Flori Sermersheim during he MH Values Youth fair.
Foothill Community Health Center wants to build a strong presence in the South Valley in helping everyone get the healthcare services they need. The nonprofit organization runs a clinic in Gilroy near Saint Louise Regional Hospital where it provides health and wellness programs. And in 2016, it hopes to open a school-based community healthcare clinic at P.A. Walsh STEAM Academy in Morgan Hill.
“One of the things we do at Foothill Community Health Services is we focus on providing access to medical and dental and vision health services to members of the community of Santa Clara County,” said Eder Torralba, manager of Foothill’s community outreach departments. “We tend to reach out to a lot of community members in the low income areas.”
Besides helping people at clinics, Foothill staff also go to community events throughout the county. They recently attended the Morgan Hill Values Youth conference held Jan. 23 at the Morgan Hill Community Cultural Center and provided free dental, diabetes, and blood pressure screenings to anyone attending. Foothill also sets up free workshops for people who want to learn through expert presentations how to better care for their health. Funding for Foothill is based on grants from the federal government, Torralba said.
“We’ve collaborated with some of the school districts in San Jose, and we recently moved here to the South County of Morgan Hill and Gilroy to serve the students,” he said. “As a federally-qualified health center, we don’t turn away, meaning we’ll provide our services to anybody whether they don’t have ability to pay, whether they have immigration status, or they have other means of insurance coverage.”
In 2016, Foothill will be doing more in Morgan Hill is collaborating with local partners and also with school sites, he said. Its doctors and nurses will be coming into the schools and providing the services that are in need by many local Kindergarten through 12th-grade students such as immunizations, dental and vision screening.
“A lot of the parents work full-time jobs so they don’t have a lot of time to take the children to the clinics,” Torralba said. “So we give them that option. We provide medical services and it eliminates that barrier.”
Claudia Rossi, a Foothill nurse and trustee of the Santa Clara County Board of Education, sees both short-range and long-range benefits in helping students get their healthcare issues resolved.
“One of the things that we really consider, there are children who might have difficulty seeing or hearing and those children tend to have behavioral problems at the schools because of that,” she said. “If you can’t hear and connect with what the teacher is saying, you tend not to be engaged with learning. Similarly, having undiagnosed vision problems, you might have a child that acts out. We always feel that before a child is labeled as ‘hyper-active’ or any type of deficiency, it’s really important to screen them for hearing and vision problems.”
Vaccinations are another important service provided to school children by Foothill, she said. At the beginning of the school year, many parents are alarmed to learn that their children can not go into classrooms unless they are up to date on their vaccinations. Many parents then have to work quickly to get a vaccination appointment for their children be allowed by school administrators to go on campus.
“There might be a delay of one, two, three or even four weeks to get in,” Rossi said. “Legally, that child can’t be admitted to school on the first day unless the child is up to date on their vaccinations. So the child is losing instructional minutes. The parents are stressed — what are they going to do? We come in and provide those vaccinations — often in one day.”
The Foothill health screenings also target diabetes and hypertension, she said. Many people in the county do not realize that they have these health issues. Foothill has a philosophy of educating people about how they can deal with these issues and its nurses follow up to make sure the patients are taking action to safeguard against future health problems through early prevention.
“We have a high rate of diabetes in the Latino community and when we do these screenings, we raise awareness by talking about diet and nutrition and we connect them to services,” she said. “There are other outfits that might come out and do screening services, and give information to the patient and then the patient wonders what he or she is going to do with this information. We also do health education at Foothill. When a person is told they have diabetes, how do they manage with this disease for their rest of their life? How do they make nutritional choice and manage their medicine such as insulin.” We see them every five to six week and give them a nutritional plan and tell them about medication and what the medication will do. And we also provide nutritional counseling for children as well.”
Torralba said that one of the benefits of the patients coming into the Foothill clinics is they have shorter wait times and get appointments sooner than at some other clinics.
“One of the things right now that the schools are struggling with is getting the appointments on time for students,” he said. “They’ll get patients two, three weeks, even a month, scheduled out in advance. With Foothill, we can provide same-day appointments, same-day care. And not only that but we follow through with our care.”
Torralba grew up in the east side of San Jose where several of Foothill’s clinics are located. He sees his work as a form of contributing a social benefit through healthy lives to the community.
“Coming from a single-parent family, it was very hard for my parent to provide the services that I needed as a teen, so it feels really good to give back to the students and people who are out there,” he said. “We especially focus on youth. We have developed a student health awareness program.”
Johnny O’Brien, director of community health services and in charge of partnership with the schools, said he is excited about developing a healthcare clinic at P.A. Walsh Steam Academy in Morgan Hill. The clinic will provide comprehensive primary care services.
P.A. Walsh Principal Theresa Sermersheim looks forward to having the Foothill clinic on campus for the convenience of students getting healthcare issues resolved.
“It’s going to allow families to get the services they need for students. When students are healthy and have their medical needs taken care of, they can do well at school,” she said. “You know, when you have a painful tooth, you can’t do anything when your tooth really hurts. There will be a dentist there. So to be able to have that kind of care available and on site is going to be a tremendous boon for everything.”
The project has been approved by the school district but no time line has been set for construction, which will be done in the campus’s field next to the Peak Avenue parking lot, she said.
“It will be designed so that people can come from anywhere in Morgan Hill and park in our parking lot and be able to get on to the site of the building. We’ll also be able to get there from our campus as well.”
“From what I understanding, anyone who is 18 or under in Morgan Hill can use these services. So that will help when sports in high school need to have a sports physical, they can go here and do that,” Sermersheim said. “For some kids going to science camp, it’s sometimes required that a doctor check them out before they go away for a few days, so they can take care of things like that as well.”
The P.A. Walsh healthcare site, when built, will be Foothill’s 13th clinic, O’Brien said.
“When we have the clinic on campus, we can take care of the students’ health needs whether it’s physical, sports physical, dental needs, family planning — whatever they need to have, they can learn to adapt and have their health cares that they need.”
