Amber Grabowski loves riding to work on her orange-and-black KTM RC390 motorcycle, but the St. Mary’s County Health Department program manager is also forging her own path.
Recently, the Bushwood resident was recognized by the Maryland Assembly with its Rising Leadership Award for her work with the local health department’s school-based health center.
“They’re my team and my family and we’re trying to do something for the community,” Grabowski, 34, said of her staff during an interview in her office in a small trailer behind Spring Ridge Middle School. “In my brain it’s something that I’m passionate about and so to me it really doesn’t come off as work.”
The award is presented to a school-based health center leader in the state who demonstrates outstanding commitment, passion, leadership and innovation within their role serving students, families and the school community.
“Amber Grabowski has played a pivotal role in the development of our SBHCs,” Dr. Meena Brewster, St. Mary’s health officer, said in a news release. “In less than two years since opening the first SBHCs in Southern Maryland, Ms. Grabowski and our SBHC team members have enrolled over 2,000 St. Mary’s County community members and provided health care to many local families.”
The St. Mary’s County Health Department, in partnership with the St. Mary’s County Public Schools, opened school-based health centers at Spring Ridge and at Margaret Brent middle schools in 2022 in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Grabowski said the health centers have had 1,497 patients and 2,104 total visits since opening 22 months ago.
She added the centers generally do not have wait times and that after treatment “a good amount” of students are able to go back to class. The clinics “provide primary care and urgent care services to all county public school students and staff during and after school hours, and open to members of the public after school is dismissed,” according to the health department’s release.
The health department is looking to add behavioral health services to the sites for the upcoming school year.
“Down here we don’t have a lot of [mental health] resources, so we work very closely with the social workers that are in the schools,” Grabowski said.
She said her five-year goal is to add at least one center at an elementary school and another in a high school, and referred to a large amount of sports physicals that were recently needed at Great Mills High School.
“I want the availability because one of the biggest things that is so helpful to families is having that flexibility of having us right there on site,” Grabowski said. “So I can eliminate more parents having to leave work and give them more options.”
Health department awarded grantThe St. Mary’s County Health Department was recently awarded $5 million in grant funding through the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission’s Health Equity Resource Communities program, which aims to reduce health disparities and improve health outcomes in underserved communities.
A news release said funding will be spread out over five years to help sustain operations at the St. Mary’s County Health Hub, including behavioral health walk-in crisis services and a variety of programs to promote health and wellness for St. Mary’s County community members.
St. Mary’s was awarded one of the 11 available grants in the state. The state health commission received 59 applications.
The local Health Hub, located in a renovated bank on Great Mills Road, currently offers walk-in evaluations of mental health and addiction, crisis counseling, primary care medical services and many additional community services that address the non-medical parts of people’s lives affecting their health. The Health Hub also helps people connect to health and wellness services in the community that they may need.
“This new HERC grant is critical to continuing services at the Health Hub,” Brewster said in the release. “While our prior grant funding was ending, we were able to demonstrate the incredible value of what the Health Hub team does for our community. … It improves access to health care, is a major resource for a person in crisis, and helps people succeed in both health and overall wellness.”
For more information about the school-based health centers, go to www.smchd.org/sbhc. For more information about the Health Hub, go to hub.smchd.org.
Most Popular
Comments / 0