School-based health clinics in the mid-1990s.

School-based health clinics have grown in number from one or two in the early 1970s to more than 600 in the 1990s. The main focus of school-based clinics is to provide primary health care and psychosocial counseling to children and adolescents in schools. This article reviews the distribution and availability of school-based clinics in 1994, discussing various models and definitions for school-based health services, the health and educational impact of school-based clinics on adolescents, and the policy issues of concern to school-based health clinics in the current era of health care and health financing reform.