Health & Wellness administrators answer questions posed by students. (Photo by Sarah Adkins)Health & Wellness administrators answer questions posed by students. (Photo by Sarah Adkins)
Mark Linn – New Editor
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On Sept. 14, the USGA hosted an open meeting for students to raise awareness of and answer questions about student health services.
The event was the first of several “town hall”-style meetings organized by the USGA for the fall semester. It was held in the RLC building and featured speakers from Student Health and Wellness covering the areas of primary care, sexual health, counseling and health promotion, as well as representatives from USGA like the program coordinator Mugdha Mokashi. The Vice President of Student Services Catherine McCarthy also spoke. The event included short presentations by each of the speakers and was followed by questions submitted to the USGA and live questions from the audience. The speakers included Jacob, Ph.D., the executive director of Student Health and Wellness and Michael Faircloth, Ph.D., the medical director of Student Health.
The first speaker was Jaocb Baggott, the executive director of Student Health and Wellness. Baggot was hired to his current position in 2013 to coincide the construction of a new Student Health and Wellness program. Prior to this, Student Health and Wellness was divided into Student Health Services and the Counseling and Wellness Services, which were located in separate buildings near the edge of campus. The new Student Health Center was opened Aug. 4, 2014 and resulted in what Baggot described as “a sharp increase in utilization,” which he attributed to its more centrally-located premises. The medical portion of health services alone jumped 45 percent within the last year. Within the counseling services, clients increased by approximately 33 percent.
Another question concerned whether health providers were LGBT and diversity trained. Baggott explained that the staff had already taken part in several training sessions dealing with LGBT issues, as well as an upcoming series of training sessions that plan to deal with cultural diversity training.
One question concerned lack of appointment availability on short notice. Faircloth brought up the option of a triage nurse, who is available by phone for advice without necessarily having to physically visit the office, even off-hours. He also said that even if no appointments were available, if a student has need to be seen that day, they would be.
“We can always add someone to the schedule,” said Faircloth. “We don’t have walk-ins per se, but people walk in all the time. And if you need to be seen, you will not be turned away.”
Another issue brought up was that of student health insurance coverage. Baggott noted that somewhere between one third and one half of UAB students are uninsured or underinsured.
“One of the things we want to work on is coming up with a plan or proposal that would give everyone access to coverage,” said Baggot. “There are different ways to approach that. A lot of institutions have a mandatory insurance requirement for students.”
Such a requirement is already implemented in limited ways at UAB. Students majoring in health profession programs, some graduate programs and international students are all required to have their own insurance or purchase it through the university. Baggott believes that there may be value in looking at applying the requirement more broadly, with the benefit being that with a larger pool of insurance, prices would be more affordable.
“One of the things that we’re concerned about is that the people who don’t have insurance, it affects their access to services. Testing that goes along [with primary care]sometimes is expensive. So we want to eliminate any barriers we can.” He also noted that students with non-local insurance might experience higher deductibles or co-pays.
