At an in-school clinic, faculty and medical students boost middle schoolers’ health outcomes—and inspire interest in health careers.
Before she began her family medicine and pediatrics clerkship at Calcutt Middle School in Central Falls, RI, Carolina Carrillo MD’25 thought about school-based health care in the traditional sense—kids with bellyaches, a nurse to assist, quick referrals to parents or a doctor.
That’s not what she found.
Working under the direction of a nurse practitioner, Carrillo diagnosed ailments, conducted medical tests, administered medications, treated wounds, wrapped ankles, and performed other medical procedures.
Carrillo once aided her supervisor as she treated a student who’d scratched their cornea. Another day, she helped perform a digital nerve block procedure to remove a fingernail from a student who had an accident involving her pinky finger. The student only missed a few lessons and didn’t need to leave school to go to the hospital; her parents were called immediately but didn’t need to leave work.
“It all happened then and there at the clinic, which was amazing,” says Carrillo, who will begin a pediatrics residency in July at University of California-Irvine. “This isn’t something that typically happens in a school nurse’s office. Every school should have a fully functioning clinic like this.”
Calcutt is one of just five schools in the state to host an on-site SMART Health and Wellness Clinic. Functioning like a doctor’s office, each SMART Clinic—short for School Health Model for Academics Reaching All and Transforming Lives—is staffed by a team of health care professionals, including a family nurse practitioner, behavioral health specialists, nurses, and medical secretaries.
The clinic at Calcutt serves as the inaugural site for SMART Plus, a program designed to spark interest in health care careers among Central Falls middle schoolers. After school, Brown volunteers host discussions about the path to medical school, teach kids about doctoring skills, conduct STEM tutoring sessions, and lead trips to local educational and health care facilities.
Joseph Diaz MD’96 RES’99 F’01 MPH’09, the associate dean for diversity and multicultural affairs at the Medical School, co-leads Brown’s participation with the SMART Plus Clinic and seeks ways for faculty and students to leverage their clinical expertise to serve the school and surrounding community. At Calcutt, the model has boosted not just students’ health, he says, but their academic success and career preparation.
“This opportunity provides Calcutt students access to ongoing mentorship and conversations about health and health care careers—in addition to improving access to health care,” Diaz says. “It’s been a game-changer, not only for Calcutt Middle School, but also for Brown.”
The Medical School has a long-standing partnership with Central Falls High School, and medical faculty and students have for years collaborated with teachers on science enrichment programs. With funding from The Warren Alpert Foundation to support SMART Plus, the programming has been extended to Calcutt.
Through a six-week mentorship and enrichment program for eighth-graders, interested students meet after school with professionals who present about their work and educational trajectories and offer health lessons. During one session, students learned how to perform CPR. In others, they went on field trips to the Medical School and Rhode Island College’s nursing program. They also participated in a career day focused on jobs in medicine and health.
Luckson Omoaregba, MS, director of pathways programs for the Division of Biology and Medicine, says the SMART Plus program aims to address an opportunity gap for individuals from low-income and underserved areas by empowering them to pursue health and teaching careers.
“The pathways initiative is the health care and workforce literacy component of the program—it’s the ‘plus’ in SMART Plus Clinic,” says Omoaregba, who often visits Calcutt to meet with students and check in with medical school mentors. “We want students to not only become interested in careers in medicine, but develop an understanding of how they can get there.”
Diaz says the layers of partnership between Brown and the SMART Plus Clinic continue to grow. On the horizon is the opening of a new clinic at Central Falls’ Ella Risk Elementary School and the extension of the SMART Plus pathways programs to those younger students.
“This initiative has the potential to be truly transformative for students and families in Central Falls,” Diaz says.