The Regional Alliance For Healthy Schools, known as the RAHS clinic, has been an amazing source for the students at Kearsley High School and the families in the community.

The RAHS clinic provides many services including:

• Physical exams or sick visits
• Mental health services and psychotherapy
• Health and fitness education programs or groups
• Nutrition counseling
• Immunizations, STI, and pregnancy testing
• Community resource referrals and insurance enrollment

The RAHS clinic also includes a mobile unit that offers vision and dental sources, they can schedule a full eye exam and glasses exam. The mobile dentist source is through Mott Children’s Health Center, they will see patients with or without insurance.

When asked what their favorite things are about helping students, Andrea Rossi and Heather Cox, exclaimed:

“We love being at KHS! Our favorite thing about helping students is seeing the personal growth when students use our services. Whether it be mental or physical health, seeing students self-advocate for their healthcare is really rewarding. We also love seeing their smiling faces!”

The RAHS program is through University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, and is open to people who are 21 and under. Patients do not need to be a registered student at a RAHS school. The RAHS clinic will accept insured and uninsured patients regardless of ability to pay.

The RAHS clinic holds small events for the students, like pee for pizza. During this event students could urinate in a cup and the clinic would test for diseases. You would also get a free piece of pizza for participating. A few weeks later the clinic would call you down for your results, good or bad everything stayed confidential.

Another small event that was held was learning about healthy relationships at lunch. They passed out flyers about healthy relationships and you had the option to sign a poster. Small events like these help our school come together to help and protect each other.

If you go to the RAHS clinic for any of the sources they offer, it will stay confidential between you and them. This includes them not telling your family anything or even mentioning to your friends that you were at the clinic. The only time that it will not be confidential is if any of the RAHS staff believes you will be a threat to yourself or others.

“Services are kept confidential unless the provider suspects the patient could harm themselves or hurt someone else,” Rossi and Cox stated.

The RAHS clinic is very useful for all the students and families in the Kearsley community.