District moves to adopt health fee

The Peralta Community College District may soon be offering students an on-site healthcare services center. The Board of Trustees is moving forward with plans to approve a new student health fee, which would help fund the center.

Alex Briscoe, Deputy Director for the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency, spoke about what the center would offer at an open forum on Monday, May 11, 2009 in the Irma P. Walker Conference Room at Laney College. He detailed the need for the PCCD to implement a health center with "the same high-quality health and comprehensive services offered to any UC student."

According to a fact sheet compiled by Laney Nurse Indra C. Thadani RN, and Becky Perilli, President of the Health Services Association for the California Community Colleges, Peralta is trailing most community colleges in the state when it comes to offering their students comprehensive health services. Out of the 109 community colleges in the state, 78 already have on-site healthcare facilities. Of these schools, more than 90 percent are charging a health fee to keep the centers running, ranging anywhere between $7 and $17 per semester

Working with an open door policy targeted solely to Peralta students, the center will offer benefits that would otherwise be unavailable to the uninsured or underinsured college population, which Thadani states to be "around 30 percent."

These benefits include access to mental health services, prenatal care, medical prescriptions, and drug testing. In addition to this, the center will also offer a "one-stop shop" for information and assistance with CalWORKS, MediCal, and food stamps.

The Alameda County Health Care Services Agency currently has 12 school-based health centers in the county, although they are mostly in high schools. They currently have 10 new centers in the works throughout Oakland.

The center will be constructed in the "hub and spoke" model, meaning that there will be one central health services department at the selected school with smaller "satellite" centers at each of the other campuses.

Briscoe stressed the importance of the fact that the county would not be running the center, but rather it will be self-sustained by the district once professionals in the medical field have been hired.

Funding for the program will come primarily from the Alameda County and philanthropy programs, with medical and behavioral health providers, the PCCD and the to-be-implemented student health fee covering the rest.