One of the values of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV is to serve with compassion and humility. This value is never more evident than when the school’s faculty and staff are working with, in, and for the community.
In two school-based clinics, school of medicine faculty provide health care to the students of the Clark County School District (CCSD) who, otherwise, would not receive any due to financial, transportation, cultural/language, or other barriers. By providing health care in local school-based clinics, the physicians make sure these students and their families are better able to thrive academically, socially, mentally, and physically. Students do not miss as many classes, parents do not have to miss work and, overall, the community succeeds when these students receive health care they may not otherwise have access to. Faculty provide services at the CCSD Family Support Center (FSC) and in the Dr. Gopal & Jeanette Das Healthcare Clinic at William H. Bailey Middle School. Since these school-based clinics opened between 2022 and 2023, nearly 3,000 students have been seen by our faculty physicians and residents.
Dr. Lyanna LaFredo, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the medical director for the clinic at the FSC, sees the role that the faculty play as indispensable to an underserved community.
“We are a safety net because, otherwise, they would not have been able to see a doctor,” says LaFredo. She notes that when the school district advises families to have their children vaccinated and to see a doctor, that is when they get a full exam from faculty physicians that they otherwise wouldn’t receive. Approximately 70 percent of the children seen are without insurance of any kind.
Quality, comprehensive health care is provided at the clinics, which includes all recommended screenings for each student. A few of the services provided include comprehensive wellness visits, vision and hearing screenings, sports physicals, sick visits, injury care, immunizations, chronic care for conditions like asthma, mental health services, fluoride administration, and much more.
In May, the contract between CCSD and UNLV Health, the clinical practice associated with the school, was renewed for five more years, which is good news for underserved students and families in the community.
In February, the school of medicine also announced a collaboration with Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada (VMSN) for free health care for uninsured individuals in Las Vegas. Faculty physicians provide health care at the UNLV Community Clinic inside the Ruffin Family Clinic at 1240 N. Martin Luther King Blvd., offering appointments Tuesdays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The Ruffin Family Clinic offers primary medical care, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, dental care, behavioral health services, and other specialties in addition to an on-site pharmacy. All services and medications are provided at no cost to uninsured and low-income members of the community funded through donations and grants.
Dr. Elissa Palmer, professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine and interim assistant dean for continuing medical education, oversees the UNLV Community Clinic. She notes that the Ruffin Family Clinic was already a “stable presence in the community,” but the UNLV Community Clinic’s goal is to expand access to care. Faculty physicians, residents, medical students, and school of medicine staff volunteer their time and provide a variety of services where “no insurances are accepted,” says Palmer.
The UNLV Community Clinic started with one evening staffed by Palmer and Dr. Aron Rogers, associate professor and vice chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine, to set up the clinic and then expand the opportunity for participation to all school of medicine faculty, fellows, and residents. A key component of these plans is to utilize school of medicine students by involving each of the four learning communities and making them responsible for a certain number of evenings. “So we’re really trying to have major involvement from the students, who perform functions at reception, rooming and seeing patients, in addition to language interpretation,” says Palmer.
Starting the UNLV Community Clinic was made possible through a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) awarded to the school of medicine.
“All the physicians, residents, and medical students are volunteering,” says Palmer. “This is a volunteer opportunity to make a great impact on the service within the community. And the patients are so appreciative of this. It's an enjoyable evening that we spend together. Seeing patients, educating patients, educating students, educating the staff, just everyone all together in a very interdisciplinary type of way. And that's why we want to continue to expand between the different specialties because you can have a primary care doc along with a specialty doc … the more we have of the volunteers, the greater will be our impact as a school of medicine.”
