The goal is to put care within the easy reach of BHS students.

There’s an old saying when it comes to teens and health care.

“If it’s not within five minutes or 50 feet, they won’t go,” said Cyndy Salisbury, who has two teenagers in Bainbridge Schools.

Knowing that, Salisbury is among a group of parents, educators and doctors exploring the idea of opening a health clinic at Bainbridge High School.

Specifics of the nascent plan are far from being finalized – at the earliest, such a clinic wouldn’t open until fall 2008 – but the group last week introduced the idea to the school board and have begun visiting school-based health clinics elsewhere to get ideas.

As it stands now, the idea is to provide better access to services that students can’t get from the school nurse.

Those services could range from sports physicals to birth control to something as simple as pain relief for a headache.

“Right now, if a student comes in with a headache, I can’t give them Tylenol,” said BHS Nurse Heidi McKay.

A nurse practitioner, however, could, McKay said, meaning that instead of being sent home, the student could be treated and sent back to class.

There are several models for school-based clinics being used elsewhere.

In general, most work with private partner organizations to provide care, with the clinics essentially operating as a satellite of the partner.

The school nurse is still paid for by the school district, but the nurse practitioner and mental health professional, along with support staff, are paid for by the partner.

The partner bills insurance providers or underwrites medical costs.

In Seattle, where every public high school already has a clinic, funding is funneled through the health department via a levy that pays for a variety of social service programs for public school children.

Doctor Jillian Worth, of Virginia Mason, who is part of the local advocacy group, said she’s spoken with several island doctors who would be interested in helping should the idea come to fruition.

Services vary by clinic, but may include sick care, health education, family planning, mental health, drug and alcohol counseling, tobacco cessation, physicals, immunizations, prescriptions, nutrition counseling and referrals.

The idea, Salisbury said, isn’t to replace students’ general practitioners, but to give them more immediate access to vital services.

The national school-based clinic movement began in 1970, but grew most rapidly in the 1990s, according to healthinschools.org, a resource center located at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.

Today there are some 1,700 school clinics across 44 states.

Nationally, each student on average visited his or her school-based clinic four times per year, according to a 2002 study by the Pew Research Center.

The clinics were used most by insured students; about 70 percent of parents consented to their children using the clinics, the study said.

On Bainbridge, students who can’t be treated at the nurse’s office are referred elsewhere, McKay said.

Like McKay, BHS health teachers do what they can to educate students about where they can find medical care. But sometimes, she said, students don’t seek care at all.

According to a survey conducted by clinic advocates, one-third of BHS students said they were “not comfortable” making an appointment to see a health care professional; 44 percent were concerned about privacy and more than half did not want their parents or friends to know about the visit.

The survey, given last fall, received 927 responses. Data was extrapolated to the school’s total population of 1,500.

McKay recognized that some parents might get nervous about having a clinic at school.

“The biggest fears are about reproductive health,” McKay said. “But what we’ve found is that students say their most common use for a school clinic would be for sports physicals and general sick care.”

Salisbury stressed that details of the plan are still a long way off. The group plans to visit more clinics.

Funding, liability and available space at the school are among the key factors. So too is clarifying to the public rules regarding confidentiality.

For patients over the age of 13 who wish to keep visits regarding drugs or alcohol, mental health, or reproductive health confidential, doctors by law must do so.

The law applies to both private and school-based clinics.

But rather than viewing a school-based clinic as a tool for secrecy, Salisbury said it should be viewed as a way to open communication.

“Doctors want families to be involved,” she said. “We want this to be a triangular thing between doctors, students and parents.”