Baral’s clinic is part of that model. It opened in 2002 in a room that was little more than a walk-in closet with a sink. There were only two seats for patients to sit and wait. The rest of them – parents and students alike – lined up around the building to meet with doctors behind rolling curtains.
Today, “Room 49” houses most of the school’s surplus social studies textbooks, such as United States: Making a New Country, The American Journey and Discover Arizona, among others.
“It’s so funny,” Baral says during a recent tour. “I can’t believe we saw patients in here.”
The original clinic was so popular that school officials moved it into a space five times as large. It now features a waiting room, receptionist area, five enclosed examination rooms and an ADA-accessible bathroom. Murals of jungle animals painted by art students from Arizona State University adorn the walls.
The clinic is open five days a week. It treats up to 20 patients a day – children in the morning, parents and adults in the afternoon. If families don’t have reliable transportation or can’t catch a bus, family resource specialists working for the school pick them up.
On a recent Friday morning, Baral and his interns are treating children for a variety of ailments. A 9-year-old girl is extremely constipated. Another child has mono. Baral’s crew chatters while searching for vitamins on a tall bookshelf.
“Did you see that girl?” an intern asks. “She looks super, super skinny. I mean she looks gaunt.” Doctors advise her parents about proper nutrition.
This is a team operation. Baral is its quarterback. He directs traffic and double-checks the work of his student doctors, who attend Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. They spend 10 weeks here as interns, learning pediatric skills and a bit of adult medicine. Much of the treatment revolves around herbs, vitamins and nutrition, but staff also can prescribe antibiotics and do urine tests.
None of them speaks Spanish, so other students or the receptionist often translate. (Clinic administrators hope to hire translators in the future.)
Their efforts are funded by American institutions such as the Sage Foundation for Health, the Virginia K. Piper Foundation, the Victoria Lund Foundation and Rotary International. The first is affiliated with Southwest College. The second is arguably the largest healthcare and education charity in Arizona. The third has ties to the Disney family while the last foundation is based in Evanston, Illinois, and stands as one of the world’s leading social service organizations.