"The engagement that Memorial has with South Bend schools, that started with nursing, has also expanded since the school nursing project started," Carl Ellison noted, citing such programs as Sex Can Wait and Baby Think It Over, both Memorial-sponsored adolescent sexuality education programs that have spread rapidly throughout the schools, some even taking hold in Michigan. "There is no doubt in my mind that the school nurse commitment and relationship helped pave the way for further programming expansion..."

That expansion continues today. As schools and healthcare change, different collaborations are evolving. People who have been involved in the School Health Partnership Program on both sides of the effort have already begun to anticipate what the future might look like.

"One of our missions is to see our schools develop into full service schools and to bring the community into our buildings," said Rosalind, "The other mission of our school corporation is to develop partnerships in the community -- to say to all of you that these children belong to all of us, and that ‘it takes a village’ to get them from point A to point B, to get them through kindergarten and through the twelfth grade, graduated, and to have met all of their needs along the way. Certainly this [School Health] partnership is right in line..."

Full service certainly includes healthcare, and the SHP Program will be essential to that effort. The next step is researching the options involved in creating school-based clinics. Carl said that in our communities, "...we know that among the poorer families, eleven percent don’t have telephones. We know that thirty percent don’ t have cars. So, particularly when it comes to medical delivery, to presume that we can refer these families to some doctor some far-place away...is probably a fallacious assumption."

Future meetings have started to move forward on a school-based clinics program, after only four years of the partnership establishment, an indicator of fast changes and improvements. This evolution is the best testament to a collaboration strong enough to continually change without being cut down. As this partnership grows, so do the fruits of its labor for the community.