
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 16, 1995                   TAG: 9506170011
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TAKE THE CARE TO THE KIDS

ADOLESCENCE, sad to say, is no longer an age associated with robust good health. Kids from ages 10 to 17 are increasingly a sickly lot. As a population group, they're the only Americans who haven't experienced improved health status over the past 30 years.

Many of their health problems, granted, are of their own doing. Many young people eat too much junk food, and sit like bumps on a log in front of the TV too many hours of the day. While other age groups have cut back on smoking and consumption of alcohol and illegal drugs, growing numbers of adolescents are taking up these harmful habits. Many teens also are into promiscuous sex and delinquent and violent behavior, which are hazardous to health.

But not all kids' health problems are self-inflicted. Many chronic illnesses, disabilities and injuries go undetected and untreated because, by and large, adolescents see doctors less and receive less preventive care than other age groups do.

Sometimes this is because they can't get to where the medical care is. More often, they or their parents can't afford it. In 1993, more than 9 million children in the nation, nearly 400,000 in Virginia, had no health insurance. Medicaid fails to cover about a third of poor children.

Whatever the reasons, emergency rooms are increasingly adolescents' health-care provider of first resort. In the year ending June '93, Community and Roanoke Memorial hospitals' emergency rooms logged nearly 4,800 visits by Roanoke-area adolescents for nonemergency conditions.

Now some good news: Adolescents' visits to these emergency rooms have declined by about 20 percent since the fall of 1993, when two school-based health centers came on the Roanoke scene - at Patrick Henry High School and William Ruffner Middle School.

These centers, plus upgraded access to medical services at Hurt Park's Teen Health Center, are pilot projects of the Roanoke Adolescent Health Partnership. It's a public-private venture involving the Health Department, the public schools, the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority and Carilion Health System, which includes Community and Roanoke Memorial hospitals, and which contributed $400,000 to the effort.

The partnership aims to improve health care for adolescents by taking the care to where the kids are. The connection with the drop-off in emergency-room visits can't be proven, but it is at least a promising possibility. Promising enough, anyway, to justify Carilion's investment amid downsizing of other activities.

Staffed by nurse practitioners, the school-based facilities offer more comprehensive medical services than are customarily available from school nurses, including physical exams, some laboratory tests, treatment of acute conditions, immunizations, family-planning information, and counseling on nutrition, mental health and substance-abuse problems.

Students, who must have parents' permission to receive services, had paid more than 10,000 visits to the centers through March 1995. And, although critics initially dubbed them ``sex centers,'' the facilities report seeing relatively few kids with sex-related needs. The overwhelming majority have serious medical conditions or emotional disturbances, many of which can lead to permanent disability, depression, even death if left untreated. Remember, too, that such problems can seriously hobble adolescents' ability to benefit from their schooling.

The partnership hopes to expand the initiative soon to William Fleming High School. Good. The further its reach, the better for Roanoke youngsters' health, education and future - and for Roanoke's future as well.

by CNB