Schools, County Launch Program to Give Medical Help to Children : Pacoima: A nurse practitioner will serve the Telfair Avenue campus. The goal is to reduce absenteeism and chronic illness.

In the first partnership of its kind in the San Fernando Valley, the Los Angeles Unified School District and county health officials Monday launched a program using a Pacoima elementary school to provide basic medical services to youngsters in disadvantaged areas.

“Too often in the past the school district and the county have not cooperated,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman said during a morning ribbon-cutting ceremony at Telfair Avenue School. “This shows what can be done.”

Under the Child Health Demonstration Project, a district nurse practitioner will visit Telfair once a week to perform physicals, administer vaccinations and treat students suffering from such common afflictions as ear infections and head lice. The nurse, who is licensed to prescribe medication, will also consult with a county physician to diagnose more serious ailments and make referrals.

“The intent is to prevent disease. . . . That’s what this endeavor is all about,” said Caswell Evans, the county’s director of public health programs and services. “This is an extremely important movement in the health and education areas to have children healthy and ready to learn.”

Telfair administrators are looking to the project to reduce absenteeism and chronic illness among the school’s 1,500 students, most of whom come from immigrant families unable to afford private health care. In turn, officials with the county Department of Health Services hope the program, with its emphasis on catching problems early, will ease an overtaxed public health system.

“We’re helping them a great deal by seeing children on site and opening up spaces for the long lines of people” at county clinics, said Marcia Lozes, the pediatric nurse practitioner who will see youngsters in the Telfair health office every Wednesday. “It just spreads the burden out.”

The Telfair campus is the Valley’s first site for the project, which coordinators plan to expand to include at least one location in each county supervisorial district. Already programs have been established at Murchison Street School in East Los Angeles and Furgeson Elementary School in Hawaiian Gardens.

Edelman, a longtime advocate of health and social services, told a group of 40 parents who congregated in Telfair’s parent center that he would write to President-elect Bill Clinton to encourage the incoming Administration to examine the project.

“This program can be duplicated throughout the country,” Edelman said.

He and other officials cited local schools as a logical nexus of services for children, particularly youngsters whose parents speak little English and do not know how to use various public agencies. Many parents also feel more comfortable taking their children to school, rather than to a clinic with its crowds and bureaucratic hurdles, officials said.

“There they’re a number. Here they’re a family,” said Lozes.

“A school traditionally is a safe place. For most parents, it’s a place to take your family,” Telfair Principal Consuelo Garcia added. “So it’s natural . . . we have these additional services.”

On Monday, a parade of parents with children in tow was already on hand to take advantage of the free immunizations offered after the kickoff ceremony.

“I don’t want a shot. I’m scared,” sniffled 4-year-old John Gallegos Jr., a pre-kindergarten student who tightly clutched his father’s neck and turned away from Lozes and her syringe.

“Just like his dad. His dad used to cry too,” John Gallegos Sr., 35, said with a laugh.

Gallegos said the new project at Telfair will make it easier for his son to receive the basic health care he needs.

“He goes to school here already, so it’ll be more convenient,” Gallegos said.

“This is sort of like rural medicine in an urban setting,” added Lozes. “It’s serving all those needs in an area that’s very close.”