Northwestern Health Sciences University Partners with St. Paul School in Unique Health Care Program

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – Northwestern Health Sciences University has joined in a health care partnership with Saint Agnes School, a private K-12 school in St. Paul, Minn. with approximately 425 students. Jonathan Williams, DC, an associate professor at Northwestern, created the program after seeing a need at Saint Agnes. The partnership primarily focuses on prevention of sports-related injuries among student athletes at Saint Agnes, and supervised rehabilitation of those who suffer from an injury.

“Because of changes in coaching, faculty and staff, Saint Agnes didn’t have the experience to help students in this area,” explained Dr. Williams. Initially the program was started to help student athletes; but Saint Agnes proposed to open up the program to all students, staff, and faculty, and Northwestern agreed.

The program offers pre-season sports physicals for athletes; weekly chiropractic care; chiropractic service at games; and preseason evaluation and re-evaluation of athletes currently dealing with injuries or that have been injured. The services are at no cost to Saint Agnes. Students, staff, and faculty can also purchase nutritional supplements through Northwestern at the same discount University students get, which is 20 percent less than retail price. They can also come to Northwestern for X-rays at a discounted price.

Currently, eight doctors of chiropractic in private practice are involved. “We are planning to expand the program to support four to six schools under contract,” says Dr. Williams. “For each school we would need 10-12 doctors to cover the games. As small as Saint Agnes is, there are 85 sporting events annually to cover. Once we have more schools and more doctors, we can then schedule interns to work with them to get field experience. From there we may expand to junior college sports, to college sports, and eventually we could work with professional teams.”

Interns assist when a certified doctor is on site, such as wrapping students before games. With no doctor on site, they can only observe.

Saint Agnes students, parents, staff, and faculty are excited about Northwestern working with them. They’ve never had anything like this before; no doctors on site to help if students got injured. Mike Streitz, athletic director and baseball coach at Saint Agnes, says he hopes this will lead to better identification of students’ injuries and a quicker road to recovery.  “We’re also working more on preventative care; taking steps to prevent injuries before they happen,” he says.

Northwestern students are seeing active injuries that they don’t see on a regular basis in the clinic. Just this season they’ve been exposed to a grade 2 concussion, a ruptured eardrum, an injury to the acromioclavicular joint on the top of the shoulder (AC separation), and shoulder dislocation. “One of the great things is that they get to see injuries from beginning to end,” says Jodell Skaufel, DC, a chiropractic clinical resident at Northwestern. “Instead of just seeing the injury from the clinic perspective, they’re seeing it from when it happens on the field, before any treatment has happened.”

Currently, only Northwestern’s chiropractic program is involved in the partnership. However, Dr. Williams foresees massage therapy, acupuncture and Oriental medicine becoming involved within the next year.