02/09/2024
Hey Georgia Residents!!!
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We can't stress how important this one is! We need your help to share it with as many people as possible.
School-based health centers (SBHCs) are a huge threat to parental rights, and they are up and running in Georgia with federal dollars pouring in. Georgia already has well over 100 SBHCs in operation. WE NEED LEGISLATION THIS SESSION!
Your child's school could soon be prescribing drugs, administering vaccines, providing mental health counseling and a host of other services without your knowledge and using a single form that you signed giving blanket consent for treatment at a School-Based Health Center.
Our lawmakers need to know these centers are not the school nurse model that many people envision. These centers are profit-based, full-service entities offering medical, behavioral and psychological treatment to students. These centers are intended to be the "medical home" for your child, billing your insurance, including Medicaid, for services rendered. As yet, there is no regulation of these centers, and it appears that parents are being given a single pre-consent form that serves as blanket consent for any and all services. Here in Georgia, the Department of Education does not require a specific consent form. One consent form that we received from a parent in Forsyth County appeared to be a blanket consent for "comprehensive health services which includes physical and behavioral health services." The DOE website does not make it clear how parents are to opt out of particular services, whether parental consent is required for each service or when parents would be notified of services provided.
SBHCs can easily sail through the lawmaking process, championed as a way to give kids in need access to health services – who could argue with that?
Your lawmakers have no idea there could be an anti-parent agenda behind the push for SBHCs. This story from Maine exemplifies why we need legislators to enact guardrails. Eric Sack, of Fairfield, Maine, discovered a ziplock bag filled with Zoloft in his 17-year-old daughter's backpack and discovered that the School-Based Health Center (SBHC) at his daughter's school had prescribed it without his knowledge. Sack said he contacted the school principal, who told him the clinic was a separate entity that he had no control over. He then called the SBHC and was told by a representative there that they could legally prescribe the medication to his daughter without informing him. The following week, Sack kept his daughter home from school to make appointments with a doctor and therapist. This resulted in someone from the school or health center reportedly contacting Child Protective Services, which investigated the family.
For more information on these centers, please see the extensive library of resources shared by our partner Stand for Health Freedom (SHF). In addition, Children's Health Defense recently shared their concerns in this article.
Use this form to share your concerns with legislators. And we must demand that guardrails be put in place to protect parental rights and informed consent.
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