Adolecent School Mobile Health Center
the problem:
In the City of Detroit, teenagers have a very hard time getting health care, including sports physicals to qualify for participation, STD testing, and family planning services. Often they must rely on parents for transportation, financial support, and to apply for Medicaid, but parents do not make sure that their children are getting the healthcare they need. Addtionally, a teenager is not likely to ask a parent for help obtaining sexual health services. However, Detroit adolescents are in need of these services. The Detroit Public Schools told our group that the schools are in most need of HIV testing and sports physicals. Many teenagers develop high risk behaviors that can affect them for a lifetime. Additionally, this is also the time period in which access to healthcare begins to decline. The downward trend in insurance coverage from childhood to the twenties begins at age thirteen. Minority adolescents are even more unlikely to be insured. Furthermore, high risk behaviors, in particular high risk sexual behaviors (which will be a primary focus of our program), lead to drastic consequences for this group which are compounded by limited access to healthcare. For example, in Detroit, 20% of births are to teenage mothers and 21% of these girls will go on to have another child during their teenage years. As such, Detroit has the highest rate of teen pregnancy of any city in the country. In the city of Detroit, it is estimated that between 1,000 and 1,500 persons with HIV/AIDS are between the ages of 13-24 year and that 1 of 110 African-American men and 1 out of 310 African-American women in the Detroit Area has HIV. Additionally, 65% of the 8,851 cases of gonorrhea in Detroit were in people between 15 and 24. The combination of limited access to primary care and need for services leads to a doubling of hospital use for the 13-17 year old age group when compared with 5-12 year olds in Detroit.
vital stats:
people impacted:
0people involved:
8why it's important:
This project is very personal to me. I understand the needs of these teenagers because very recently, I was going through the same difficult dilemma of trying to get sexual health services while in high school, but having very little information and very little resources. My friends and I would drive downtown in my hometown of Grand Rapids into a "bad neighborhood" to Planned Parenthood. We didn't know anything about sex, had no one to tell us the truth, and relied on eachother to share any (ussually unreliable) information we could find. As a result of this system that prevents teenagers from accessing the healthcare and information they need to be healthy, many of my friends at the time now have young children of their own and many others have had to make the devastating decision to have an abortion. I never had money to pay for the services I recieved free of charge from the Planned Parenthood, but they saved my life. I made a vow to myself that I would pay them back someday. This project is my way of fullfilling that promise.
the plan of action:
I work with a group called the "Pediatric Mobile Team" at the Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. The group is composed of a pediatrician, medical assistant, social worker, and office coordinator and they drive vans to sites around the city to provide free pediatric care. The Pediatric Mobile Team will visit high schools throughout the city of Detroit to set up Adolescent Health Clinics. These clinics will be designed with input from students in the schools during focus groups and we will work closely with student groups, such as student councils, sports teams, and national honors societies. The clinics will be available free of charge. Students will be given a questionaire to assess high risk behavior and special needs. They will then be given a comprehensive physical and STD testing if sexually active. Students who need additional services will be referred to the social worker for resource coordination.
how you can get involved:
We hope to get students at the schools involved in the project as much as possible. We will work with the student groups to find student volunteers to help organize focus groups, advertise the clinics, and to help out with set up and break down on the day we visit each school. Periodically we also get residents and students from Wayne State University's Medical and Nursing schools to help with patient care.
project updates:
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