Oakland Students: Four Free Clinics Are Still Open For You During the Pandemic
The Oaklandside/September, 2020
A month into the fall semester, nurse practitioner Karen Gersten-Rothenberg asked a teenage patient a screening question that she always asks during the pandemic: How’s distance learning going for you?
“That’s when she told me that she didn’t have a computer,” Gersten-Rothenberg said. “She had already missed three and a half months of school, including the spring. Luckily, that was an easy problem to fix.”
Gersten-Rothenberg works for La Clínica de la Raza, which operates six of Oakland’s 16 School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs) for OUSD students and community members. In addition to prescribing birth control, testing for sexually transmitted infections, and offering physical exams and vaccines, the centers provide mental health counseling and, in some cases, vision and dental care, year-round.