District welcomes school-based health centers

Las Cruces Public Schools Superintendent Ignacio Ruiz and school board members joined the leadership of La Clinica de Familia last week to celebrate the opening of three school-based health centers, with more in the works.

A ceremonial ribbon cutting was held on Friday, Oct. 25, outside one such facility on the campus of Picacho Middle School, 1040 N. Motel Boulevard. Located in its own building facing the parking lot, the center includes an examination room, a private office for consultations, a pharmacy and a room for community events or larger meetings.

Similar facilities also opened at Lynn Community Middle School and Mesilla Park Community Elementary School.

“These centers will serve as hubs for both physical and behavioral health care, ensuring that our students, families and staff have access to the services they need,” school board president Teresa Tenorio said during the ceremony.

Ruiz said the health centers are part of a broader effort across the district to provide “wraparound services” to students and their families, and made reference to the recent opening of a family support center at the district’s central office.

“When we provide these type of supports, when we look at these wraparound supports, it's going to impact not only the current state of our students and their academic outcomes, but also their future and their families as well,” he said.

Kristin Oreskovich, an adolescent health coordinator with the New Mexico Office of School of Adolescent Health, said 25 percent of students who use school-based health centers do not access health care elsewhere, and cited research from the state Public Education Department that correlates the health centers with increased school attendance and graduation rates.

The centers are funded with federal COVID-19 relief dollars as well as a grant La Clinica de Familia was awarded by the state to supply equipment, furnishings and staff to the centers.

La Clinica de Familia’s area practice manager, Ernesto Robles, said efforts to establish the program began in 2022 and that sufficient funding had been secured to support 17 school-based health centers between the Las Cruces Public Schools and the neighboring Gadsden Independent School District.

“We will be following the hub and spoke model, where the hubs are those clinics who will physically house the medical and behavioral health providers, and the spoke sites will be served through telehealth services,” Robles said, mentioning Las Cruces-based Electronic Caregiver as a partner in the program.

“Having healthy children makes our community stronger because they are the future of our state,” Robles continued. “By healthy, I mean that every child in New Mexico should have access to nutritious food, clean water, housing and access to medical and behavioral health services.”