Virtual Distance Learning

One year after its launch, the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) Mobile Health Clinic has provided free healthcare services to over 150 students at 34 clinics. The LCPS Mobile Health Clinic, which started in June 2023, provides healthcare services to students in the Sterling Park community with the goal of helping to facilitate their school enrollment. Healthcare services provide by the Mobile Health Clinic include school entrance physical health exams and tuberculosis screenings, both of which are required for school enrollment, and hearing and vision screenings. 

In addition to healthcare services, Mobile Health Clinic staff refer students and their families to community medical and dental practices for additional support or to help them establish a medical home for further care. 

Sarah Eaton Boise, LCPS outreach services supervisor and coordinator of the Mobile Health Clinic, said that the clinic provides vital services for students and their families in the Sterling Park community. She said that students in this community are often uninsured or underinsured and may face other challenges to accessing healthcare, including lack of transportation, lack of a medical home, language barriers, or unfamiliarity with the LCPS school system or U.S. healthcare system. 

“The Mobile Health Clinic brings healthcare directly to our students. By receiving these free required school physicals right in their own communities, our students can begin school on time and healthy. The Mobile Health Clinic also helps connect the families with a permanent medical home through Inova Cares Clinics or HealthWorks for Northern Virginia,” said Boise. 

The clinic is made possible through a partnership with Inova Health System. This partnership provides the clinic bus, the bus driver and registered nurses. Each clinic has two Inova registered nurses who help with the physicals and conduct initial screenings. A community schools nurse practitioner, an LCPS employee, completes the physical. In addition to these medical staff members, each clinic has LCPS Spanish interpreters and a clerical assistant. Translation access is also available for other languages.

In addition to support from Inova, the Mobile Health Clinic was funded last year through a Community Schools Development and Implementation Grant from the Virginia Department of Education. For the coming year, LCPS is working with the Loudoun Education Foundation (LEF) to secure funds. Earlier this year, LEF was awarded a grant from 100WomenStrong and Amazon Web Services to continue the mobile clinic's work. 

For this summer and looking to the future, Boise anticipates that the Mobile Health Clinic will continue to provide vital services. Eighteen clinics are planned in the Sterling area for July and August. These clinics include some evening and Saturday hours to support working families. Boise said that LCPS is also in communication with community health partners, HealthWorks for Northern Virginia, Inova, and Loudoun County Health Department about how LCPS might partner with them to expand healthcare services for the student population.