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PRESS
10.27.2009 - Ground broken for NAIOP Casey Jones Health Center
By Tony Illia -- Las Vegas Business Press
A deepening recession has sharply curtailed charitable contributions, especially among hard-hit real estate companies. Struggling for economic survival, companies are cutting costs and trimming staff. But members of the Southern Nevada chapter of NAIOP, a commercial real estate trade group, are still donating their time, money and resources toward the construction of the Casey Jones Health Center.
On Oct. 22, officials broke ground on the new 1,203-square-foot clinic at the 19-year-old Wynn Elementary School at 5655 Edna Ave. in Las Vegas. The project is being valued at $250,000.
The clinic will offer free health care to approximately 5,000 students younger than 18. The clinic is part of the Communities in Schools of Nevada program, which offers free basic health care to underprivileged Clark County students. The project embodies the altruistic spirit of Rives "Casey" Jones III -- a respected construction executive who served as NAIOP chapter president in 2005. Jones died at age 75 in 2006 after a two-month illness.
"Casey was one of our chapter's most dedicated members," said NAIOP Community Service Committee Chairwoman Barbara Demaree of Southwest Gas Corp. "This facility was meant to honor him by providing resources to help needy children, many of whom live in a one-room apartment with eight people and have never seen a doctor."
Pugsley Simpson Coulter Architects designed the single-story, wood-framed, stucco-and-glass building on 4.38 acres. The clinic will provide immunizations, dental care and psychological consultation in three examination rooms. Crisci Builders is the general contractor; Wright Engineering and the Slater Hanifan Group are the engineers; Martin-Harris Construction is the owner's representative. The project will finish in late January.
10.26.2009 - Elaine Wynn on KNPR
10.22.2009 - Schools have valued partner in Elaine Wynn’s group
By Emily Richmond, Las Vegas Sun
More than a decade ago Elaine Wynn approached the Clark County School Board with an offer — to help establish a local affiliate of a national organization that helps find community partners for needy campuses. The group even offered to set up a student health clinic.
The School Board turned her down.
Some people considered her efforts heavy-handed, though well-intentioned.
“It was a humbling experience,” said Wynn, director of Wynn Resorts and chairwoman of the national board of directors of Communities in Schools, the student support organization she wanted to bring to Clark County.
On the upside, the intervening years serving students in more than a dozen other states meant when the organization came back to make its case to the local School Board, there was much stronger evidence “that what we were talking about could actually make a difference in students’ lives,” Wynn said.
Communities in Schools of Southern Nevada, which Wynn helped launch in 2003 with the support of Clark County education officials, today helps thousands of students at dozens of schools on a daily basis. Indeed, the organization — with Louise Helton at the helm as state director — is now considered such a vital partner that Wynn and national President Daniel Cardinali are the featured speakers at a regional education research conference being hosted this week by Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes.
The organization’s ultimate mission is to reduce the nation’s dropout rate. But rather than take the more obvious route toward that goal — such as offering tutoring programs — the group focuses on the basic services that are critical to a child’s ability to learn, but are not within the district’s primary mission or budget.
The kinds of assistance offered by Communities in Schools can make a difference in a student’s future by helping to level the playing field in relation to other students, Rulffes said. “They help to fill the gaps in opportunities that our students can’t get at home.”
Communities in Schools provides basic medical care at two elementary campus clinics — Martinez and Cunningham — serving more than 5,000 students per year. Today, the organization will break ground at Elaine Wynn Elementary School on its third free-standing health clinic. Sponsored by the Southern Nevada chapter of NAIOP, the commercial real estate development association, the clinic will be named in memory of Casey Jones, who served as the business group’s president in 2005.
Working with the regional Three Square Food Bank, Communities in Schools last year provided about 15,000 backpacks of nutritious food for students to take home on weekends. The students who received backpacks saw their grades improve an average of 32 percent in mathematics and 26 percent in writing.
The group’s approach is about more than money, Wynn says.
While emphasizing the necessity for children to be healthy before they can be expected to learn, Communities in Schools also focuses on developing the individual student’s ambition and potential.
“This isn’t about a passive experience,” Wynn said. “We help the school to identify the obstacles that are keeping them from succeeding. Then the students can get the targeted services and support they need.”
Cardinali said the organization is careful to focus on supporting, rather than supplanting, the responsibilities of families to their own children. Research shows that parental involvement is essential to student success. To that end, one of the group’s priorities is to support outreach efforts to parents, many of whom had less than positive experiences when they were students, and might not view the child’s campus as a place of encouragement and support.
“We reach out, make home visits and create a bridge into that school,” Cardinali said. “That’s a powerful way to strengthen families and family involvement.”
There is no shortage of people who want to help, Wynn said, but at many schools the services are fragmented, which can ultimately dilute the effectiveness.
Perhaps the organization’s greatest strength is to bring everyone to the table at the same time, serving as both an umbrella and a springboard.
“We’re not interested in being the food bank, we’re not interested in providing dental care ourselves — we find the groups that are doing that already, and bring them together where the children are already spending most of their time, which is at the school,” Wynn said.
As for the schools, they are grateful to be freed from the burden of providing a host of social services, Wynn said.
While expectations should be high for public education, it’s an “unrealistic burden” to imagine students can be picked up at the end of the day with all of their myriad needs having been met Clark County School District, Wynn said.
“It’s going to take all of us to get the job done,” Wynn said.
10.12.2009 - Hundreds attend festival
By Laura Pieroni, Elko Daily Free Press
ELKO — Communities in Schools of Northeastern Nevada and Elko Parks and Recreation partnered up to raise funds for Elko county children with their Scarecrow Festival fundraiser Saturday.
The organizations filled the Home Arts Building at the Elko County Fairgrounds with candy, activities and crafts while outside a hay maze entertained children. The witches’ brew and mask making were very popular with the kids, while the adults seemed to like the kettle corn.
The festival was put together with items the organizations purchased, scarecrows made by local schools for auction, and donations from local business.
“I think a big part of it is Stockman Supply helping out with the three hundred hay bales,” said Communities in Schools Coordinator Lela Rainwater.”Without them we couldn’t have pulled that off.”
Rainwater was very impressed with the turnout, “I was hoping to see at least 500 people come through, and I think we’ve exceeded that.”
Communities in Schools’ proceeds will be going to support their hunger prevention program. The program serves breakfast at a few local area schools and sends backpacks of food home to at-risk children for the weekend.
Elko Parks and Recreation’s proceeds will be going to scholarships for summer and after school programs. “We don’t turn anyone anyway,” said Recreation Director Dawn Leyva.
07.18.2008 - School-based clinics offer care for kids in health system’s gaps
By Emily Richmond -- Las Vegas Sun
In the student health center at Cunningham Elementary School, a young girl waits to see the doctor.
Her arms and legs are covered by a painful maze of tiny red marks. It takes a moment for pediatrician Noah Kohn to recognize what he is seeing — hundreds of overlapping bites, the result of the girl’s sleeping on a bedbug-infested couch.
Cunningham, on Jimmy Durante Boulevard not far from Sam’s Town, is a long way from Summerlin, where Kohn spent about five years in private practice.
Kohn was thriving professionally, but thought he was falling short when it came to community service. He had enjoyed volunteering with a mobile clinic during his medical student days at Georgetown University but had yet to find a similar opportunity in Clark County.
At a friend’s wedding about a year ago he was introduced to Louise Helton, state director of Communities in Schools of Southern Nevada, which matches volunteers and donors with campuses in need. Idle chitchat turned to talk of work, and Helton mentioned she was having trouble finding someone qualified to oversee the group’s two school-based health centers, at Cunningham and Martinez elementary schools.
“How about a board-certified pediatrician?” Kohn said.
Now, six months after he gave up his lucrative private practice to oversee the clinics, Kohn says he is where he is supposed to be.
“I know it sounds trite, but I absolutely love what I’m doing,” Kohn said. “I love being able to help people.”
Martinez, in North Las Vegas, has one of the district’s highest percentages of at-risk students from low-income families. Communities in Schools opened the student health center there in 2004.
Cunningham was selected in part for its proximity to other district schools, which makes it easier to refer students and their families for services. The health center opened in October.
It’s mostly the working poor who visit the clinics, Helton said. They don’t qualify for Medicaid and can’t afford the minimal costs associated with the state’s subsidized health plan. She estimated that 10 percent of the families visiting the clinic receive public assistance.
The clinics serve from 150 to 250 patients a month, providing everything from vaccinations to dental care to mental health services. Struggling families also receive referrals for social services, legal assistance and housing help.
“We try to go the next step, beyond the therapeutic care,” Helton said. “What we do here is look at the bigger picture.”
Brad Burns, division president of Centex Homes, covered the $1.1 million cost of building the health centers through the Burns Family Trust. Private donations will cover the cost of a third student health center, scheduled to open next year at Elaine Wynn Elementary School. Wynn is chairwoman of the national board of directors of Communities in Schools.
It costs about $300,000 a year to operate the two clinics, which are managed by the nonprofit Community Outreach Medical Center, with most of the funds coming from United Way.
Local dentists volunteer through Miles for Smiles, and the University of Nevada School of Medicine, UNLV and the College of Southern Nevada also provide staff. The School District pays the utility bills.
“This isn’t about one organization or one volunteer,” Helton said. “We’re talking about an army.”
The nonprofit Nevada Health Centers operates similar clinics at C.P. Squires Elementary School, Roy Martin Middle School and Valley High School. Basic High School also has a campus health center, operated in partnership with Nevada State College.
Without the campus clinics, the only place a school could send an ailing student was University Medical Center’s emergency room, said Diana Taylor, director of health services for the district.
There are students whose families have little or no health insurance and cannot afford even basic medical care, she said. That leads to students’ showing up at school with untreated illnesses, as well as undiagnosed vision and hearing problems.
The health centers are providing “a lot of medical care that our students otherwise just wouldn’t be getting,” Taylor said. “That’s an invaluable resource.”
06.03.2008 - Community Spirit Award Winner Honored -- Dr. Noah Kohn
Las Vegas Now
It takes years of hard work and dedication to become a doctor and we know there a lot of room for success. But it's all relative.
Doctor Noah Kohn sees sick kids every day, but he's not used to seeing bugs.
"I never saw bed bugs in Summerlin, and I rarely saw lice," he said.
And how does he get rid of them?
"Mayonnaise or olive oil. Suffocates the lice and if you keep it on long enough, it kills them just like Rid or Nix and it's less expensive," he said.
Kohn thinks up economical home remedies all the time, because most of his patients can't afford prescription medicine.
"I have children who haven't been to see a doctor in four, five or six years and they've got nothing," he said.
But he had everything -- a medical degree from Georgetown, a successful practice with thousands patients and a supportive family. Six months ago he gave up his practice and his income for what he says is his true calling.
"I've wanted to do something like this for a long time, and now was the opportunity," he said.
Now, he's the only full- time doctor in Las Vegas serving two low-income schools as part of the Communities in Schools program.
"Here, these children have nothing. They have no healthcare at all," he said.
That's why he says his job is even more important.
"I see families everyday here who work hard all day long -- two or three jobs and they're not able to get ahead. I was lucky enough to do that, so it's important to be able to give back to them," he said.
Kohn says he's still doing what he loves and tell us it's his family that has inspires him the most.
"I feel like my life is a lot plumber now. I love what I do. I love my job. I love helping people and I get to spend time with my own children, which is really so important for all of us to be able to do that," he said.
Channel 8 and our Community Pride Partners honor Dr. Noah Kohn as our Community Spirit recipient for June.
Watch video here
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