Students facing chronic and acute health conditions frequently turn to their most trusted ally – a school nurse. But the dire shortage of nurses means many students lack such resources.
Oregon overall has “one of the poorest student-nurse ratios in the nation,” Nina Fekaris, chair of Oregon’s Task Force on School Nursing and the president-elect of the national School Nurse Association told The Lund Report. The task force is preparing recommendations for legislators, with its report expected by September.
Funding is the main handicap and several solutions are popping up such as a $5 vehicle registration fee which would raise an estimated $17 million of the needed $110 million a year, and help 700,000 students across the state, a proposal put forward by Yousef Awwad, CFO of Portland Public Schools.
Another idea is enacting a soda tax similar to Philadelphia, said Tom Sincic, a family-nurse practitioner who represents the Oregon Nurses Association.
Community health workers could work alongside nurses, said Maureen Hinman, with the Oregon School-based Health Alliance who suggested finding ways to bring electronic health records into schools and dealing with HIPPA and Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act confidentiality requirements.
Jeremiah Rigsby, senior manager of state and federal regulatory affairs for CareOregon, suggested creating a Center for School-based Health Services to collect data on how to best use funds to reach certain outcomes.
“These problems are not insurmountable,” said Tashia Sample, senior policy analyst with the Oregon Department of Consumer & Business Services.
