UnitedHealthcare Grants

UnitedHealthcare Supports Three Major Initiatives at SBCHC

UnitedHealthcare of Texas has invested in helping the children and youth Spring Branch Community Health Center serves through three generous grant awards. On behalf of these young people and their families, we are extremely grateful for UHC’s support of our youth initiatives, and proud to be selected as a key partner in this important, impactful work.

 Adolescent Health and Wellbeing

Spring Branch Community Health Center regularly encounters teens facing seemingly “adult” crises, including many without parents, others who lack secure and stable housing, many who don’t get enough to eat, and a few hundred teens per year who are already parents themselves. With funds from UnitedHealthcare of Texas, SBCHC is designing a program of social supports for the most vulnerable youth in our area: those who may have dropped out of school, developed substance abuse problems, and those who face the challenges of parenting as a young person themselves. The funded support programs will assist young people by securing housing, assisting them to achieve stability, and sustaining them as they commit to addressing their issues and engage in positive behaviors to secure their futures. SBCHC’s program benefit adolescents primarily through Behavioral Health and Case Management services. Youth are linked to assessments and treatments for adolescents facing complex behavioral health challenges including depression, anxiety, and coping with daily stressors. Over time, the program will host groups of teens to creating welcoming, therapeutic environments for them to engage with both professionals and peers. Case Managers will also provide formal referrals to connect to vital services in the area to help teens address their social needs including housing, transportation, access to healthy foods, educational supports, and financial counseling. Ultimately, this program will help adolescents understand how to structure a successful future despite the extreme challenges they face.

Empowering Health (Wellness Center at SBISD Northbrook High School)

Through another grant award, UHC has provided funding to kickstart a School-Based Wellness Center project to provide students in the Spring Branch area new access points for mental health care. By integrating mental health services on two collaborative partner campuses, one for students at Northbrook High School (NHS) and one at SpringSpirit Youth Sports Complex, the Wellness Centers will address the mental health and social service needs of at-risk and high-risk youth by empowering them to manage their own social, emotional, and physical health, while striving to support them in positively improving their academic achievement in terms of improved attendance, higher grades, and a better chance at graduating than when they enter care.

As a safe space within the school walls, the NHS Wellness Center will allow students to drop-in before and after school, during Lunch and other free time during the academic day for impromptu visits of 5-15 minutes to help students in social or emotional distress, those in-need of a brief counseling check-in, or simply needing a break from the stresses of the day.

The second Wellness Center on the SpringSpirit campus will operate after school hours, on select weekends, and during the day when NHS is closed on break also offering a dedicated safe space for students for similar brief drop-in visits. SpringSpirit is a nonprofit youth sports organization that seeks to positively influence Spring Branch youth and adolescents by providing opportunities for physical wellness, educational development, positive mentorship through sports, and by offering families opportunities for spiritual growth through ministry. The organization prioritizes serving youth who have limited opportunities to play sports, engage in extracurricular activities with positive peer groups, and are referred to them because they face problems at school or at home. At SpringSpirit, kids are primed to receive healthy advice, lean on the adult mentors on campus, and build from the positive tools that their programming provides.

Spring Branch Community Health Center, SpringSpirit, and Spring Branch ISD, believe that these Wellness Centers and the Wellness Counselors will make a significant impact on the mental health and academic success of high school students in the Spring Branch community. With funding support, from United Healthcare, we are making the first phase of the Wellness Center program a reality to provide essential mental health and social services to the most vulnerable youth in our community.

Strengthening Quality (STAR+ Kids for NAM)

Finally, UHC provided funding for a project to improve the quality of and increase access to healthcare service for the underserved pediatric population in our service area, especially those with developmental disabilities and complex, ongoing medical needs. Since assuming the operations of a pediatric charity clinic in northwest Houston in 2022, SBCHC has been serving a patient population with a high number of children on Medicaid, CHIP and those with disabilities requiring complex medical care. Now, through the UHC grant award, the Northwest Community Health Center will increase capacity by hiring a medical provider specifically focused on providing expert, compassionate care for these children with the specialized knowledge and experience to do so in a comforting manner. The new provider will prioritize care for the special needs patient population while also providing care to more routine well-child patients and will have the expertise to refer patients for special services as needed.

Additionally, since the families of these children with special needs require access to a multidisciplinary team of healthcare professionals to address all of their associated needs, the newly funded medical provider will work in tandem with the clinical team and case managers to ensure there is continuity of care and care coordination by referring patients to specialty care and services as identified through UHC’s roster of in-network providers. The specialist to which special needs children will be referred include physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists, among others. This team-based approach will help provide comprehensive and coordinated care to meet the unique needs of each child in this underserved community.