Back to School, Back to Health

It was back-to-school night at Edmondson School, a worn and battered campus serving a swath of faded suburbia in Norwalk. And just as on countless other campuses this warm October night, work-weary parents eager to get home squeezed themselves into the muggy auditorium, expecting the usual upbeat preview of the year to come.

They would get that. But they would also get something unexpected: a marketing pitch on behalf of a government-subsidized health insurance program called Healthy Families.

It is estimated that 1.8 million to 2 million California children lack insurance. What that means is that many do not get regular checkups or care. As a result, routine ailments such as ear infections and toothaches linger and become chronic. What it means for schools is that students are often absent and must struggle to keep up.

“When we are not feeling well, do we perform our best at work?” said Rosa Carreon, Edmondson’s principal. “We may come, but we’re dragging all day. Can you imagine how children feel?”

Most of those children could be covered by Healthy Families insurance at a cost of $9 or less per month. But many parents haven’t signed up, either because they don’t know about it, or if they’re immigrants without papers, they’re afraid of authorities. The Children’s Defense Fund reports that six of 10 parents whose children are eligible for low-cost or no-cost health insurance do not know it.

Schools seem an ideal place to reach out to these families because they play a central role in the lives of children and communities.

Given their vested interest in healthy students, educators are taking up the issue at parent conferences, pizza parties and events such as the one at Edmondson.

“If the program is explained properly, the parents are going to be there for their kids,” said Donald Attore, who is working on an outreach effort for the California Teachers Assn., the statewide union. Because parents tend to trust their children’s teachers, “Who better than the teachers” to provide that information, he said.

The problem is particularly pronounced in communities such as Norwalk, Pico Rivera, Bell and Montebello, which are home to large numbers of hard-working immigrant families whose low-wage jobs don’t provide health benefits. It is estimated that 70,000 children in the state Senate district that includes Norwalk go without insurance, the second-highest concentration in the state.

“That is absolutely unacceptable,” said state Sen. Martha Escutia, a Democrat who represents the area.

Escutia, whose children are 6 and 2, feels so strongly about the issue she came to Edmondson’s back-to-school night to exhort parents to enroll their children.

“You deserve this, you pay taxes, please sign them up,” Escutia said to the packed room, first in English, then in Spanish. “A healthy student is a smart student.”

As she spoke, a mother and father in the second row mulled over the application. Afterward, they sought Escutia out. They told her they were in the country illegally. Could they still sign up?

Yes, she told them. Children born in California or here with proper documents are eligible, regardless of the status of their parents. Don’t worry, she said. Just sign up.

That’s what Veronica Urzua, the mother of 8-year-old Vanessa, a fourth-grader, plans to do.

When her daughter gets sick, she now must go to the emergency room at County-USC Medical Center, she said. She must wait hours for treatment. For dental care, she goes to a clinic in Long Beach that charges $22 per visit.

If her income qualifies her daughter for Healthy Families, she’d pay $5 per visit.

“Right now, they’re healthy,” she said of her daughter and two older children. Left hanging in the air was unspoken worry about what would happen if that changed.

Another Edmondson parent, Maria Madriz, 39, knows firsthand about the danger of going uninsured. She is a farm worker, and her husband works in shipping. They have eight children. Between flu and ear infections and one child’s broken arm, the family racked up more than $5,000 in medical bills, which they are paying back at $68 per month.

Now that her children are enrolled in the Healthy Families program, she said, she worries less about them getting sick.

The California Assn. of Health Plans, an insurers organization and a co-sponsor of the outreach campaign, is enthusiastic about working with the schools.

“It’s obvious that’s the way to reach huge numbers of children,” said Walter Zelman, the association’s president.

Still, the numbers of uninsured are daunting. It’s estimated that there are more than 200,000 children in the Los Angeles Unified School District who are eligible for low-cost health insurance but uncovered. So far, the district has managed to get only about 2,000 into the program through its outreach efforts.

The district is backing legislation that would enroll most eligible children in the program automatically.

Educators’ concern for the health of students is long-standing--and unavoidable.

When Carreon came to Edmondson a decade ago, the school had the lowest test scores in the district. But she had a more pressing problem. “I had children in my office every day crying because they had earaches and stomachaches,” she said. “I saw so many children who were ill.”

As she set about recruiting teachers and improving instruction, she also began finding ways to take care of her students’ physical needs.

The Lion’s Club supplied glasses for $20 per child, and if the family couldn’t spare even that amount, Carreon found the money. She also found low-cost dental care. Kaiser-Permanente, the HMO, sent a mobile clinic out to the school and began teaching parents about good health practices. The city of Norwalk now provides transportation to clinics.

Still, she tried to make sure her teachers did not treat their students’ poverty as an excuse for not learning. Now the school’s test scores are improving.

“I tell teachers, when the students walk into our school, this is what we have, and we have to do what we can to help them be successful,” Carreon said.

After the pitch for Healthy Families was over at Edmondson, Carreon urged parents to meet their kids’ teachers and hear about the year to come. “Your children have the best teachers in the state, if not the nation,” she told them.

Their role, she said, was to send them to school healthy--and covered by insurance. And, with that, they filed out into the cool of the gathering dusk and along the covered walkways to the most important place on any campus, the classrooms.