Vans Provide Healthy Tomorrow

The program known as Healthy Tomorrows started with one van visiting five Santa Ana elementary schools and offering health care to children who otherwise probably would not have received it. Then the program expanded to 10 schools. Now, six years and thousands of children later, a second van will be added.

Healthy Tomorrows is a tribute to effective teamwork among private donors, a hospital, health-care professionals and several agencies of government.

Children’s Hospital of Orange County will pay for the new van, which will start serving eight more schools this month. And it was Children’s Hospital that was a key proponent of the program when it first was discussed eight years ago.

Doctors saw that many children with preventable diseases were being admitted to the hospital. A follow-up survey at two elementary schools in Santa Ana found that 88% of the students had untreated health problems. Many never had seen a doctor.

After two years of planning, the first van hit the streets. It has been a success from the start. Immunization rates have risen from 51% in 1992 for Santa Ana elementary school students to 100% this year. The rate for students who have received physical examinations also has risen dramatically.

Orange County’s Health Care and Social Services agencies deserve much credit for the program. Besides contributing funding, they provide personnel to help children and their parents.

A parent must accompany a child receiving treatment in the van. That gives the health-care worker a chance to discuss nutrition and other aspects of health beyond aspirin and injections. Social workers can look out for problems beyond medical care and help children talk about their concerns.

Critics of programs like Healthy Tomorrows say schools are for academics only. That’s a nice theory, but it ignores the fact that an ill child won’t learn very much and could wind up infecting the student at the next desk. Nor can school nurses, whose numbers shrink as caseloads grow, cope with all problems.

Healthy Tomorrows also can play a role in steering immigrants, who make up much of Santa Ana’s population, away from back-room clinics dispensing medicine illegally. Three county children have died in the past two years after receiving treatment in such clinics. The vans that parade from school to school fill a gap in the county’s health care system.