Health official briefs Student Senate on medical amnesty program
By Kristin Majcher
September 12, 2008
Two strange things happened at Wednesday’s Ohio University Student Senate meeting. First, the meeting was in Walter 235 instead of in the usual governance room downstairs. Second, the meeting started with a presentation given by a walking cell phone.
Char Kopchick, director of Health Promotion at OU, dressed in a full-body cell-phone costume with the message “CALL 4 MEA” on the front to spike senators’ interest in a presentation about a new medical amnesty program called Medical Emergency Assistance.
Student Senate started developing the program with Kopchick and OU’s Associate Director of Health and Wellness Terry Koons last year. The goal of the program is to encourage students to call for help if they see a student in need of medical assistance due to a drug or alcohol overdose.
Kopchick and Koons reported that 92 percent of students interviewed said they would hesitate to call 911 if they saw a student in an emergency situation, if they felt that calling might expose that student or themselves to judicial charges for drug or alcohol offenses.
“We realize that there are times when people may make poor choices, and this program actually helps us get students who made a poor choice the med attention they need,” said Kopchick. “We make sure they don’t have to pay for that poor choice with their life.”
The program will allow students to help peers who have been engaging in high-risk drinking or drug, without worrying about those friends or peers getting in trouble from Judiciaries. Many students wait for friends to sober up instead of calling for help when it is necessary, said Koons.
“The idea is not to wait around for hours at a time hoping they get better,” he said.
In order for a student to be exempt from university drug and alcohol charges, however, they must need medical help and complete a $100 drug or alcohol intervention program through OU Counseling and Psychological Services.
Judiciaries will charge students who fail to complete the program or comply with counselors’ recommendations for the appropriate offense. Students who receive help can only use the Medical Emergency Assistance program one time and will be charged for subsequent offenses.
“You get one shot at it. We don’t want repeat offenders,” said Koons.
Students who call or receive emergency care under MEA will not face disciplinary action from OU, but the program will not prevent disciplinary action from the city of Athens. In other words, police may still cite students if they see illegal activity.
A single member of university Judiciaries will handle cases dealing with the MEA program, and decide if a student is eligible on a case-by-case basis. MEA does not protect students from legal consequences of their drinking or drug use, such as assault, property damage, or the distribution of illicit substances.
Another health-related issue at the Student Senate meeting concerned the renovation of the new Hudson Health Center. Kent Smith, vice president for student affairs, said the university has already started signing contracts with insurance companies to start third-party billing. So far, at least one major insurance company has made a deal with OU.
“Insurance companies have been very receptive to us billing them,” said Smith.
Smith said the university has sent out requests to architectural companies for bids to renovate Hudson Health Center, which he estimates will take six months to a year to complete. A complication of the project will be finding temporary locations for counseling and student health services during the renovation, said Smith.
OU is also close to signing a contract with Protocol, an Oregon-based company that will offer a 24/7 crisis hotline to students who choose to pay the quarterly $40 fee for the WellBeing health program.
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