The Hazards of School-Based Health Centers
In lockstep with the federal and state level push to expand community schools is the effort to increase the number of school-based health centers (SBHC). This development has conservatives and parents’ rights advocates understandably alarmed.
While health interventions in public schools have been occurring for years, the new SBHCs will provide “comprehensive healthcare,” including “behavioral and mental health services, reproductive counseling, lab and prescription services, various medical screenings, immunizations, and disease management.”
To pay for all this government intrusion, the cost burden has shifted from primarily private sector foundations during the Clinton Administration to government entities using taxpayer dollars in recent years.
On January 1, 1997, Phyllis Schlafly addressed what she called the medicalization of the public schools in her first newspaper column of that year. Phyllis wrote that private foundations had “a game plan to turn the public schools into delivery centers for all kinds of health services, including physical examinations, treatment and medication of children, with or without their parents’ knowledge or consent.” The scheme she described then to change the schools’ mission “from academic learning to social services dispenser” has come to full fruition in 2023.
According to critics including the Children's Health Defense (CHD), a major concern with SBHCs is that “children will receive, or be pressured into receiving, unnecessary or unwanted medical interventions — including vaccines ...” unbeknownst to their parents. Georgia attorney Nichole Johnson, a consultant to the CHD legal team and co-director of the Georgia Coalition for Vaccine Choice, fears that parents “are being left out of the equation” when it comes to making medical decisions for children at these clinics.
“It’s scary,” Johnson said in an interview with CHD’s online publication, The Defender, “because these health centers sound really good. In some of the rural and poor communities especially, this is going to seem like a really good way for children to get this care. And while there may be some conveniences, there are so many concerns with allowing medical exams and treatments at school.”
Cornering the market
Another concern is that “parents may not be aware of the broad range of medical and behavioral services being provided in their children’s schools.” For example, the pharmaceutical giant Merck, which produces the Gardasil HPV vaccine, “is one of the funders of the School-Based Health Alliance, a large networking organization that ‘works on policy, standards, data, and training issues’” for SBHCs. Thus, one of the chief makers of a vaccine that is almost certain to be administered in a school-based health clinic is financially supporting a key outlet for its product.
In a number of states such as New York, lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow HPV and other treatments for sexually transmitted diseases to be given to minors without parental knowledge. The Defender referenced a report dated July 2022, produced by Harvard University’s Center for Law and Policy Innovation and the University of California Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, which admits that “school based vaccination programs decrease barriers to access by partnering with health care providers to provide vaccinations during school hours on school campuses.”
This report recommends the HPV vaccine for 11- and 12-year-olds despite years of negative publicity about the safety of these vaccines. Even the leftwing Slate.com reported in 2020 on research showing that “HPV vaccine trials put safety on the back burner,” and noting that the researchers found “significant flaws in the manufacturer’s attempt to vet its product’s risks.” Slate further described how “while not conclusive, the findings do spotlight potential signs of rare neurological harms that outside experts say warrant a comprehensive look at the raw data, and they paint a damning picture of how the manufacturers evaluated their products’ safety.”
The Slate article acknowledged that these vaccines “didn’t cut the rate of cancers in the trials” because “most HPV infections are cleared by the body without causing any harm; the few that remain and trigger malignant growths typically take decades to do so, and most trials lasted no more than a few years.”
But Slate nonetheless defended the push to vaccinate young teens and pre-teens, noting: “While they [the researchers] found much to criticize, their study ultimately revealed no solid evidence of serious side effects.”
Stacking the deck against parents
Justine Tanguay, an attorney who has advocated for children in various areas of the law for 20 years, told The Defender that parents need to be aware of the “blanket consent-to-treat forms” many schools will be sending home this school year, which will allow schools to provide all the aforementioned medical care and more.... “[There are] so many pitfalls,” warns Tanguay ... “so many ways for someone else to be making parental decisions” for children.
Parents who take issue with SBHCs are up against a formidable foe. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advocates for these centers, and the Biden Administration and Congress have rubber stamped their expansion with passage in June 2022 of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Section 11003 supports “access to health care services in schools,” and the law provides $50 million in HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) grants to “implement, enhance, or expand the provision” of healthcare services in SBHCs using Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This means children covered by those programs can be reimbursed for health services administered in their school’s health center.
As if all this weren’t enough, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement affirming SBHCs and providing “recommendations that support the coordination of SBHCs with pediatric primary care providers and the pediatric medical home,” which suggests that pediatricians will partner with schools to establish the SBHC “as an extension of their practice or by supervising the care.”
No regulatory oversight
Attorney Tanguay cautioned that SBHCs operate “without proper regulatory oversight.” And the organization Stand for Health Freedom echoed this warning in a July 12, 2023 article describing SBHCs as “the next threat to health freedom taking place in schools throughout the nation,” due at least in part to the absence of regulation.
The article further stated:
- SBHCs are intended by the Biden-Harris administration to be the “medical home” for your child, including primary health care services, reproductive counseling, dental care, and mental health counseling, replacing what the child would typically receive from providers outside of the school. Even worse, the Department of Education (DOE) has proposed changing the process for students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), removing the requirement for schools to receive parental consent before submitting Medicaid claims for reimbursement on behalf of their children.
[T]here’s no set standard for who employs the providers, which services are offered, whether the services are provided to only students or also the community at-large, or how parental presence and parental consent are handled. Most schools are only asking parents to sign a single form at the start of the school year for their child to be seen in the SBHC anytime (and for any reason) throughout the school year. Other schools in states with minor consent laws are not only bypassing parental consent, but also intentionally withholding information in the name of “the student’s privacy.” There are also questions about which laws (if any) govern this health data since FERPA regulates student data, HIPAA regulates health data, and loopholes exist for both.
Stand For Health Freedom contends that parents and concerned citizens “don’t have to sit idly by as predatory policy is passed around us, leaving our children vulnerable,” and they invite everyone to visit their website for more information on how to fight back. “After all,” the group points out, “parents are the solution.”
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