News
Page 10
Street
Reading,
writing and
rural health
Beaverton’s N ina Fekaris,
president o f the National
Association o f School
Nurses, talks about the
*
complicated overlap o f
housing, health care and
education, particularly in
Oregon’s rural communities
ILLUSTRATION BY ELIZABETH CO NSIDINE
BY SARAH HANSELL
STAFF WRITER
to Oregon Health &
A c ccording
<
Science
)regon has 53 service àreas in 24
counties where the population’s health
needs are not being met. That means that
Oregonians in those areas are not getting
adequate access to primary physical, mental
and oral health care services.
Among those most affected are thé
youngest and most rural residents in the
state.
Nina Fekaris has been a school nurse
with the Beaverton School District for
almost 30 years, and
L last summer was
named president of
Housing Rural Oregon the National
Association of School
Nurses. She believes
This article is part of Street Roots’
that providing more
Housing Rural Oregon series. The goal is
school nurses to
to broaden our views around housing and
rural Oregon would
housing-related policy to promote better
have a deep impact
understanding of the issues communities
on not only the
face across the state.
health of rural
Oregon communities,
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but also the
educational outcomes.
According to Fekaris, school nurses are
much more than the person you go to when
you’re not feeling well and you need a note.
Rather, school musses are community
educators who provide preventative health
care that keeps kids in school and boosts
graduation rates.
Fekaris talks about a school nurse in
Chicago who discovered that students who
were being expelled for bringing weapons to
school wereactually so afraid for their safety
they brought them in to protect themselves
from being attacked. Another school nurse
inrural Tennessee organized Telehealth,
health care telecommunication technology,
in order to get both students and families
access to vital health care.
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students who are hom eless, and especially
students in rural areas with little access,
sometimes the school nurse is the only
health care option.
Sarah H ansell: In a 2016 article, you said
that the ideal school nurse to student ratio
should be 1 to 750, but in Oregon the ratio is
something like I to 3,000. I t ’s estimated that
40 percent o f school districts throughout the
state don’t have school nurses at all. So where
are we now?
N in a Fekaris: I do not think those
statistics have really changed any. I haven’t
heard that districts are eliminating
positions, so I don’t think we’re worse off,
but I also don’t think we’re much better.
S.H.: Could you tell me what some o f the
big impacts are of that vast ratio?
N.F.: The (job) of the school nurse is to
make sure that her students are healthy and
that they’re safe and that they can be in the
building and ready to learn. We’re looking at
trying to build capacity, not only within our
students, but we also support our families.
When we have such high ratios, or even
when districts don’t have any school nurse
services, we believe that there are unmet
health needs that are going unnoticed or
under-noticed. The number of children with
chronic or acute health conditions has kind
of skyrocketed over the past 10 years. The
number of children with anaphylaxis, which
is g life threatening allergic reaction, that
has increased dramatically. Our number of
children with Type 1 diabetes has increased
dramatically.
And those are life-threatening health
conditions, that unless school staff
understand th e signs and sym ptom s and
know how to trea t quickly, can result in a m » ¡
child’s death. And so if th e re is no health
care provider, and school nurses are
oftentimes the first front line kind of health
care providers that children have in school,
if that service isn’t available, then I believe
we’re putting children in Oregon at risk.
S.H.: W hat are school nurses seeing these
days that they weren’t seeing in the past?
Essentially, w hàt’s the experience o f the 2 1 s t?
century school nurse in Oregon?
N.F.: The dramatic increase of children
with life-threatening allergies and Type 1
diabetes: These medical conditions
significantly impact the amount of time and
planning and preparation that a school
heeds to have in place to keep those
students safe. The other huge issue that
we’re seeing is mental health. Mental and
behavioral health concerns have also
skyrocketed, and that has been within the
last five years that we’ve really seen that
huge increase.
It’s children coming to school with severe
anxiety; early, early diagnoses of kids with
potential eating disorders; children that are
experiencing such kind of traumas or
adverse childhood events in their life
outside of school that coming to school is
kind of their safe haven.
S.H.: ow much would you say housing
insecurity and homelessness affects students’
health and school performance?
N.F.: It’s a dramatic effect. There have
been studies that have shown that homeless
See NURSES, page 11