The Wellness Center at Garfield High School is doing more than providing health care services to its students and community. It is inspiring wellness—a notion this historically impoverished community in East Los Angeles had little awareness of before the clinic opened in 2012. 

One of 14 “wellness centers” established by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s $19.5 billion New School Construction and Modernization Program, the school-based health center provides primary, reproductive and mental health services for little to nothing. 

“Families that are fragile for whatever reason and need additional support should be referred and streamlined into the LAUSD healthcare system,”  Executive Director of the Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health, Maryjane Puffer said. 

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The services provided by The Wellness Center include mental health counseling, nutritional counseling, vaccinations, physical examinations and family planning. Students can access the center’s services regardless of ability to pay and while community members must need a basic level of health insurance to take advantage, they are often able to set up an individualized payment plan for coverage. 

“Here at the school grounds, it is a better option for [the students,]” Edna Barajes, outreach director and health educator at The Wellness Center, said. “One: they don’t miss school. Two: They can come any time; they just need to ask permission from their counselors ... It’s easy access for them.”

The L.A. Trust, a non-profit advocating for adolescent health, teamed up with LAUSD in 2009 to target medically underserved regions at risk of ascending into “severe” rates of teen pregnancy, obesity and lack of health insurance, according to Puffer. The LAUSD Proposed Strategic Plan for school-based health centers found that in 2006, there were between 53.5 and 89.6 live births per 1,000 15-19 year-olds in the Garfield High School neighborhood. Equally as alarming, nearly 41 percent of Garfield High School students in 2007 failed a body composition exam testing the likelihood of obesity-related diseases. These factors, coupled with the school’s 41- 45 percent enrollment in Medi-Cal during early 2007, pegged the East Los Angeles school as a “high priority” space for the establishment of a $1.6 million health center. 

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Though data is not yet available to evaluate statistical success of the clinic, Puffer and the staff at The Wellness Center say it is the culture within Garfield that has undergone a significant change since it converted from an automobile shop bordering the campus grounds. 

“I believe that the people working in the school and the clinic see the hopefulness and are embracing the momentum to change the way we do business,” Puffer said referencing to the growing segment of traditionally school centric health care providers expanding coverage to the community for a new mission: additional revenue and social change. “It is not just a clinic on campus; it is a clinic integrated with parent systems, school district resources and the community.” 

Both Puffer and Barajes agree that any social movement toward a healthier L.A. begins with the students. For them, it is not just about distributing contraception; it is about educating the most permeable audience about health so they too can create a precedence of wellness for the next generation of leaders. 

“The reality is, kids are having sex at an early age. We as a community, as an outreach and health educator have to let them know they can come and talk to us,” Barajes said. 

In addition to much needed health education, The Wellness Center is providing students an invaluable opportunity to get involved with the school’s athletics program by offering physical exams required to join a team. For Garfield High School freshman Marina Martinez, a spot on the basketball team might not have been possible without the clinic’s services. 

“I did try going to another doctor, but they wanted so much money,” Martinez said. 

Patients like Martinez are relatively typical to The Wellness Center. According to USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, immigrants raise 64 percent of all L.A. County children. Barajes says of those immigrants many are undocumented and as a result are sometimes fearful of reaching out for medical assistance, leaving their children with limited options. 

“For our community we have a lot of issues with people that don’t have documents. So I think The Wellness Center really gives them another perspective,” Barajes said. “If the community needs anything we are willing to help them. 

Now Barajes is gearing up to pass the baton of health education to the students of Garfield High School. In an after school program spearheaded by The Wellness Center, students research health issues and create presentations later shared in classrooms. 

“Right now we are doing an STD campaign, but we let take the youth take the role,” Barajes said. “We go ten percent, but the students go the rest.” 

Empowering the students and then the community to take responsibility for their own health is what Puffer says is the ultimate goal of Garfield High School’s wellness center. 

“The community needs to be a provider of its own care,” Puffer said. “Our work is to continue to motivate folks to invest in these systems because they are the most hopeful movement I have seen in the delivery of a genuine population of child and adolescent health care.” 

Reach Staff Reporter McKenna Aiello here and follow her on Twitter @McKennaAiello.