⁄Profile⁄ Student Bodies and Minds BY AMY MILSHTEIN BACK-TO-SCHOOL NIGHT will look a little different in Dufur — a Wasco County town whose population was 635 as of the 2020 census — this year. Along with meeting teachers and reconnecting with classmates, its students, parents and the rest of the community will celebrate the grand opening of the district’s brand-new School-Based Health Center. The clinic represents a solid win for the town. Accessing health care in Oregon remains difficult, but it is especially challenging in rural and frontier areas. Desperately needed behavioral and mental health services are even harder to secure. But for kids in Dufur — there are 360 in grades pre-K through 12 — their immediate family and school staff will be able to address basic medical and mental health needs right on campus. The need for more physical and mental health services for youth is clear. Across the country, children are suffering from increased incidents of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. And they’re not the only ones struggling. The issue was even summed up in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that aired in May this year, where a teacher, played by Maya Rudolph, laments working in a school filled with rampant behavior issues admits to the kids that “Y’all won.” “COVID broke something we can’t fix,” Rudolph says wearily. While the sketch is more focused on teachers’ burnout than kids’ School-based health clinics deliver muchneeded care to one of our most vulnerable populations. Why doesn’t Oregon have more of them? “The people in Dufur were grant-writing machines.” KRISTEN NICOLESCU, PROVIDER, ONE COMMUNITY HEALTH 20
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