Health Center faces inaccessibility issues

BY AMELIA REED staff writer

As the Berkeley High School Health Center manager for the past two years, Jorge Flores oversees and manages its daily operations, including all of the resources brought to students such as first aid, sexual and reproductive health services, and youth development programs.

Despite publicity efforts every year, Flores expressed concern with the program gaining as many students as it could, partly due to students not being entirely aware of all the resources they offer, and partly because of the awkward hours during which it operates.

About 1,300 students end up using the services from the Health Center each month, but Flores doesn’t think enough students are using all the resources to their full potential.

He gave the notion that students who use the Health Center’s resources to its full capacity must first set aside the fear of coming alone.

“I don’t think it’s that people don’t know about it, I think it’s more the idea of coming into a clinic by yourself without your parents,” Flores said. He believes that part of the reason students might be afraid to use the Health Center is also because they don’t know that any services they access are confidential.

Q: What do you normally do in Black Student Union’s weekly meetings?

Tesfaldet: During the leadership meetings we discuss ... what fundraisers we're going to do or what we're going to talk about at the next general meeting. And then when we have our general meetings, we tell them the plan, see if everybody is cool with it, and see what we can adjust. We always love to get feedback. We definitely want everybody to have a voice, not just leadership. We do a lot of trivia and Kahoot! kind of games. Sometimes if there are really important current events going on, we like to bring a spotlight on that and talk about that.

Q: Is Black Student Union doing any special activities for Black History Month?

Tesfaldet: Each day of the bulletin we're going to be talking about one Black historical figure that we think is important. We're also going to have a spirit week, the last week of the month, where we're going to have different themes for each day. And then we are going to have a little celebration on the campus green, where we're gonna have food and probably a performance. We'll have games, and it’ll be really big during lunch. So if people want to stop by, anybody is welcome to join in.

Although students might dodge using the Health Center because of confidentiality concerns, others frequently employ its services. BHS sophomore Eloise de Valpine visits multiple times every week. She often finds herself going for its crackers, along with other foods. De Valpine added that she tends to go to the Health Center during instructional periods as an excuse to spend time outside of class.

Flores suspects that some students are still not aware of the Health Center after the COVID-19 pandemic and when school was online. “When we returned to school in-person, a lot of students didn’t know about the Health Center,” Flores said. There were two years of students that weren’t able to experience or didn’t know about the Health Center until school got back in-person again.

“Students (need) to understand that our services are confidential, specifically the reproductive and sexual health (services),” Flores said. This means that parents or guardians won’t be asked for permission if their child is wanting to use the Health Center’s resources, and they won’t be notified if their child does.

Mental health services are most commonly accessed by students at the Health Center, according to Flores. When a student requests mental health services, they are given access to a therapist, which the Health Center follows up on 24 to 48 hours after a request, in order to get students the help they need as soon as possible. Student crises including self-harm or abuse get immediate attention and services from the Health Center.

Other students have not found themselves in a situation where they need or want to go to the Health Center. “I haven’t ever had a need to use it,” said Eliza Harder, a BHS junior.

Despite some students not requiring the Health Center’s services, BHS sophomore Leo Naville has found himself wanting to use the Health Center but not being able to because of its hours. In general, the times that Naville has wanted to use the Health Center, it has been closed. He does not consider himself afraid of using the Health Center, rather that he has had unlucky timing in pursuit of using its promised resources.