It is usually hard to get anything useful done in waiting rooms,
but a new student-run information center at the UCLA
Children’s Health Center is providing parents with an
opportunity to learn about child and family health issues while
they wait.
The Students for Community Outreach, Promotion and Education
opened the Child and Family Resource Center in July, with the
intention to inform parents and families about the community and
health resources available to them.
The desk set up by SCOPE is located in the pediatric clinic of
the UCLA Children’s Health Center, on the second floor of the
Medical Plaza 200 building.
Some topics covered include federally funded health insurance,
immunizations, nutrition, housing, domestic abuse, literacy, job
training and general parenting information.
“We’re linking children and families to available
resources in the community and empowering them to take better care
of their kids,” said Dr. Alice Kuo, creator of the program
and a pediatrician at UCLA.
According to Janice Man, a third- year Molecular, Cell, and
Developmental Biology student and a co-coordinator of SCOPE, the
center provides a one-stop resource window about anything ranging
from health to job issues.
“If you call for other services, you’re on the phone
waiting for 40 minutes,” Man said. “(With SCOPE),
you get results immediately and in person.”
The center specifically caters to a needy population made up
primarily of Spanish-speaking, single mothers on welfare, Kuo
said.
“I think (the center) is a nice compliment to the medical
services doctors provide,” Kuo said. “It recognizes
that children’s health is not just based on physical
health.”
Emotional stress from poverty and violence can have a
long-lasting impact on children, Kuo said.
Broken bones heal, and kids get over colds, but emotional stress
can scar them for the rest of their lives, compromising their
ability to learn and to do well in school.
The information center provides a less intimidating atmosphere
for parents to ask questions that might be humiliating to disclose
to professionals, especially topics relating to mental health or
domestic abuse.
“Physicians don’t necessarily ask whether (their
patients) need food stamps,” said Marie Gonella, a
UCLAÂ medical student and another coordinator of SCOPE.
Kuo adapted the idea for putting a student-run “help
desk” in the waiting room of a health clinic from similar
student-run information centers at East Coast universities such as
Harvard and Georgetown.
However, the SCOPE center differs from these models because it
provides students with an academic curriculum worth four units of
class credit in exchange for their volunteer services, giving them
the chance to apply what they learn in the classroom to their work
for the community.Â
“It gives students the chance to reflect and think about
their experiences,” said Kuo. “It acts as a jumping
ground for seeing the bigger picture; your experience becomes the
whole class’ experience.”
According to Kuo, the class, offered during fall quarter,
attracts students from the social sciences and law, as well as
medicine.
From the very beginning, students were a vital part of the
center.
“I provide guidance, but the students come up with their
own protocol for what needs to be done and how they should do
it,” Kuo said.
Jessica Ahlberg, a 4th year medical student at UCLA, spent the
summer getting SCOPE off the ground.Â
Undergraduate Janice Man and medical students Marie Gonella and
Sara Acree are coordinating SCOPE’s resources for the
year.
SCOPE is currently made up of approximately 30 to 40 students,
including undergraduates, medical school graduates and students
from classes offered this fall by Dr. Kuo and her colleague,
Professor Todd Franke from the Department of Social Welfare.
“We don’t necessarily have all the answers, but we
look them up, and we tailor our resources toward what people are
asking,” Gonella said.
“It’s great when a woman comes up to you with a baby
on her shoulder and asks for information on job training,”
she added.
Students involved in SCOPE are also working on expanding their
facility and designing presentations and posters to show parents in
the waiting room what SCOPE has to offer.
The biggest challenge Kuo finds now is getting the word out
about SCOPE.
“It’s a great model for what could be happening in
pediatric clinics across the country,” Kuo said.