St. Joseph clinic narrows the medical-care gap for unaccompanied minors
Doctors at Penn State Health St. Joseph – Downtown Campus provide much-needed medical care to unaccompanied minors while they are temporarily at shelters in the Reading area.
The unaccompanied minors, or children who enter the country without a parent or legal guardian, are sent to shelters across the country until their sponsors can be established. In that time period, the doctors at the St. Joseph clinic serve as their pediatricians, giving them a medical evaluation and treating any other pressing medical needs.
“Sometimes we’re the first doctors they have ever seen,” said Dr. Steph Lee, medical director of refugee resettlement and pediatrician, preventive medicine/public health specialist, Penn State Health St. Joseph ─ Downtown Campus. “We complete their checkups and try to get some of their medical history. A large part of the initial appointment is getting them vaccinated against a variety of childhood diseases.”
Dr. Steph Lee, left, reviews a patient’s growth chart with physician assistant Kiara Lopez de Latchum.
Because information is often missing in the young patients’ medical histories, clinic doctors have to quickly catch them up on their vaccinations. Clinic doctors also treat unaccompanied minors who have experienced traumatic events and many with more complex health issues, such as pregnancy and a history of seizures. In these cases, especially, it is difficult to maintain the children’s continuity of care because they will likely leave the area once their sponsors are established.
“With the more complex patients, it is important to stay in communication with our Penn State Health specialist colleagues so they are aware of what we have discovered so far,” said Lee. “The goal is to ensure these patients are healthy, regardless of their past history.
“These children have so much tenacity and resilience,” Lee continued. “They help remind us, as physicians, of our humanity. We hear a lot of stories from these unaccompanied minors about the violence they’ve left behind in their home countries. Taking care of them helps us reevaluate our own biases and reset our perspectives on who deserves quality, compassionate medical care. We believe it’s our responsibility to make sure all children can live a good life.”
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