A one-stop shop for healthcare on campus

By SUKHJOT SAL

Tan fir wood. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Twelve exam rooms. Open seven days a week.

In addition this these features, the new Health Center on Oregon State University’s campus boasts an abundance of natural light and open space, as well as the return of on-campus pharmacy located just across the street in the Samaritan Athletic Medicine building.

The Health Center is a five-year-long collaboration between Student Health Services and Samaritan Health Services that is expected to open in late June.

The building sits in the southern end of campus — in some exam rooms, you might find yourself just 12 inches from the edge of Reser Stadium. This location also offers patients a larger parking lot than Student Health’s previous location at Plageman Hall in the northern end of campus.

Student Health Services will continue to provide comprehensive care to students, with the added benefit of Samaritan Health Services providing same-day, after-hours care in the evenings and on weekends when Student Health Services isn’t open, according to Kelly Hower, executive director of Student Health Services.

“The Plageman Building was initially built as an infirmary, not as a clinic,” Hower said. “This constrains the way in which the clinic can flow. In terms of collaboration, having Samaritan as a partner in providing easy access to care when Student Health Services isn’t operating will be a huge benefit to students, as well as faculty and staff. Faculty and staff will also benefit from access to Samaritan Health Services primary care services.”

Beyond the spacious lobby, the first floor of the Health Center includes a lab space and occupational health services affiliated with Student Health Services.

According to Mark Ylen, public information officer for Samaritan Health Services, the second floor will have an onsite Samaritan Family Medical Clinic, which will provide full-service primary care for students, faculty, staff and the community, as well as a SamCare Express offering everyone same-day treatment of health problems that are not life-threatening.

The center’s third floor offers conference rooms for care providers and allergy care services for patients. On the fourth floor, OSU’s Student Health provides reproductive healthcare through Oregon ContraceptiveCare and STI testing. Scattered throughout the floors are designated spaces for providers to collaborate and discuss patient care in depth, gender-inclusive bathrooms and lactation rooms.

“We are down to the last couple weeks of the final touches,” Hower said in a press conference on May 23. “We plan to move the major part of the clinic from the old building into this space the week of the 20th of June, and plan to open and operate at the very end of June, beginning of July.”

Samaritan will move into the Health Center mid-July, added Kelley Kaiser, the senior vice president chief administrative officer for Samaritan Health Services.

From OSU’s perspective, Hower said they recognize Student Health operations are currently confined by Monday through Friday hours and know that students have concerns that operate outside of those times.

“I think the ability to have Samaritan Health partner with us and create more access for students in the evenings and on the weekends will allow [us] to have students be able to access care here on campus, instead of having to go out,” Hower said.

For Samaritan Health, Kaiser said this collaboration created the opportunity to expand their primary care services within the Corvallis area while supporting students and faculty, as well as community members.

“The shift across campus will give us an opportunity to redefine Student Health Services on campus,” Hower said. “We will be having certain parts of Student Health actually not located in this building. We are defining this buiilding to be where we are providing our medical services, our primary care services, lab.”

As part of the Health Center’s mission to provide all aspects of medical care, the Center for Advocacy, Prevention and Education will have one Advocate in the clinic who can meet with survivors looking for health care as well as advocacy services.

The rest of CAPE, all of their Prevention team and the rest of their Advocacy team, will also be moved from Plageman into Suite 350 of the Student Experience Center, the third floor.

Student Health Services hours of operation will continue to be Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. for in-person visits, with telehealth appointments being available until 6 p.m.

Samaritan Health will be open Monday through Friday, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. on the second floor of the new building.

Across the parking lot from the Health Center, you will soon be able to find the new on-campus pharmacy, located on the other side of Reser Stadium in the Samaritan Athletic Medicine building.

STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES: Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.

The last time OSU had a pharmacy on campus was in May 2020. After decades of providing pharmacy services to the OSU community, it was forced to closed because revenue was not enough to continue operaions.

“The pharmacy is scheduled to open later this summer and will offer both convenient walk-up and curbside service along with free delivery of prescriptions by mail,” Ylen said.

“Any student who pays the health fee has access to basic office visits with Student Health Services at no charge,” Hower said. “If other charges are incurred during a student’s visit, Student Health Services will courtesy bill insurance if we have this information on file. Insurance details are collected as part of the new patient process. Most insurers will consider Student Health Services to be out of network. We do offer a Student Health Insurance Plan through

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Calendar

GRAD NIGHT 2023

June 8, 7:30 - 10 p.m.

CH2M Hill Alumni Center

A casino themed night of free food, dancing and games put on to honor the class of 2023.

SPRING INTERNATIONAL BAZZAR

June 10, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center

Enjoy shopping amongst a collection of international decor, collectibles baked goods and more.

C3 SUMMER CONCERT

June 22, 6 - 8 p.m.

Chintimini Park

This free event will feature the folk band Pheonix in an outdoor summer concert avalible to all.

As Pride Month begins the fight for equality does not stop

By SYDNI ZIDAREVICH Justice, Equity and Diversity Beat Reporter

Despite an increased recognition of LGBTQ+ rights, the fight for equal rights is not yet over.

The Stonewall Uprising began in a gay club, the Stonewall Inn, located in Greenwich Village in New York City, when the NYC police raided the club. This raid led to a riot as the police “hauled employees and patrons out of the bar,” according to History.com.

What followed was six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar. To honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement, Pride is now celebrated in the month of June.

However, some in the community have pointed out how Pride Month seems to have made a turn somewhere along the way, and is now a performative measure for large companies and corporations, rather than commemorating and honoring the achievements and struggles the LGBTQ+ community has and continues to face.

Tali Ilkovitch, a member of the community who works within the Pride Center on the Oregon State campus, recalled a time that they were celebrating pride in a bar, and were “basically treated like a zoo,” by other bar goers, stating that a queer space is rare to come by.

“Visibility is really important. But it's also visibility without numbers and without people supporting us and keeping us safe is just us putting ourselves at risk…there's a balance there,” they said.

Carter Trinidad, another member of the community who also works within the Pride Center, spoke about how it is nice and important to celebrate, but to remember that pride began as a riot.

“We're still demanding our rights; we're still fighting for today … there's so many people that are still being left behind,” Trinidad said.

Ilkovitch offered alternatives to a pride party and parade that an ally of the community could partake in such as lobbying, showing up to the city council, voicing opinions, mutual aid items and asking individuals to take their own personal time to learn and educate themselves on issues of the community.

“We (the LGBTQ+ community) do so much unpaid emotional labor to educate people … Pay trans people of color, patrons, people of color, especially if they're educating ” Ilkovitch said.

According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, available for free online, in 2023, 79 anti-trans bills have been passed out of 556 that have been proposed across the country. At this time, of these 79 bills, 71 have been signed into law and 8 others have passed, but have yet to be vetoed or signed.

For comparison purposes, the Trans Legislation Tracker noted that in 2022, 26 anti-trans bills passed out of 174 proposed–this is approximately a 15% passing rate.

This year, in just one month, the U.S. doubled the number of anti-trans bills being

Health Center

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PacificSource that is considered in-network at Student Health Services, and is available to students if they are interested.”

On the other hand, while Samaritan Health Services will charge students for all services, they are more likely to be able to bill your health insurance.

“For Samaritan Health, we are pretty much covered with all insurance companies, so all insurance companies would be accepted and taken in,” Kaiser said.

Students and university staff who have been treated at the previous clinic are well acquainted with the dimness and generally confined environment in Plageman Hall, part of which was located in a basement with substantially fewer windows and natural light.

“This is way more space than we currently have,” Hower said during a tour of the center on May 23. “Out of the basement, nicely lit, temperature controlled… The building we’re currently in, while it has so much memory, it’s nostalgic, it’s ready for us to move on. The cooling doesn’t work consistently, you know, it’s a very old building. I think people are excited to work in a new space.”

Hower noted that with Plageman’s three floors and older structure, patients would often get lost, and that’s something they hope to avoid with the new Health Center.

“Even just the way-finding in this building will be much easier. We’ll have one main entrance, as opposed to — I don’t know, I think that building had like seven or eight ways to get in and out,” Hower explained. “The exam rooms will considered across the country from the previous year.

Some of these anti-trans bills targeting gender non-conforming performance, deemed, “drag bans” such as Arizona Senate bill 1026, which “use(s) broad definitions like dressing ‘in clothing and makeup opposite of the performer's ... gender at birth"’ and using language like ‘drag show targeting minors’ to insinuate harmful intent.”

There are a number of bills that would affect transgender individuals on an educational level as well, such as bill AZ SB1700, which encourages parents to report and ban books that are said to promote gender fluidity or gender pronouns.

Another bill that would affect the transgender community is the AZ SB1001, which requires a guardian and teacher to approve of a student’s pronouns.

In 2023, there has been an escalation on healthcare, seen in states like Kansas, Oklahoma, and South Carolina that are introducing bans on gender-affirming care that extend into adulthood — up to 26 years old.

“If there's anything I want cis folks to understand … we're not being dramatic when we're saying that this is literally like fascism … it's banning everyday trans (and gender non-conforming) folks being in public … you can literally be arrested, or … not able to play sports or use the bathroom,” Ilkovitch said.

According to Trinidad, this is what makes celebrating Pride difficult: knowing that some individuals within the community are less affected by what is happening systematically, while trans people are being targeted.

Both Ilkovitch and Trinidad expressed that action needs to occur and policies need to be passed that protect the LGBTQ+ community in order for there to be solidarity with the community and among the city of Corvallis.

“These are just like basic rights … if you can't go into public, how do you work? How do you survive? It just eliminates the ability to physically exist. I feel like maybe people don't make that jump … it literally writes us out of existence, in society,” Ilkovitch said.

As more anti-trans legislation passes in other states, individuals in the community, such as Trinidad and Ilkovitch have noticed, what they call, a “queer migration” from Midwest states to more Northern states and more open states such as California.

Trinidad spoke about their experience working as a pride mentor, noting how many students from Midwest states mentioned moving because they didn't feel safe there. However, they also mentioned that students would have the expectation that there would be a safe place here in Corvallis, but that some still can’t find that space.

“I think that with this anti-trans legislation, people need to also realize that this has been happening to us for centuries, like hundreds of years, thousands of years,” Trinidad said. “They're forgetting about their black and brown trans brothers and sisters who have been continuously affected through this.”

Although this is the fourth consecutive record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation in the U.S., instances of targeted gender discrimination is evident throughout history. Trinidad gave the example of when the Spaniards arrived during the era of colonization.

The Spaniards aimed to eliminate indigenous culture and even outlawed their cultural practices related to gender, which led to the genocide of indigenous peoples, spanning two regions in Mexico.

According to Trinidad, these indigenous communities and many like them are now experiencing ongoing cultural and gender revival and reclamation.

“We cannot keep indigenous people out of the conversation because we are on indigenous lands,” Trinidad said. “There's so many other immigrant communities that have come over that have their own cultural practices that include multiple genders … so it's very important to add on the intersectional lens when talking about anti trans legislation laws.” be nice, too — not old office spaces, and temperature-controlled too.”

“Right now, you have one provider who has one room so they can see one patient, and then the patient leaves, so you have to clean the room and bring the next patient in,” Hower said. “Here, having multiple rooms that aren’t assigned to just one person, you can have multiple patients coming in at different times and being seen a little more efficently.”

The new Health Center also includes a large break room lined with more floorto-ceiling windows, to be shared by both Student Health and Samaritan staff and encourage further bonding between both organizations.

“It’s definitely a great opportunity for students, especially to get access when Student Health Services is not available, they can come to the Samaritan services,” said Jessica Lopez, a member of the Student Health Advisory Board.

It seems more accessible, with more opportunities, said Lopez, and overall, helps the student body.

“I think the fact that we’re going to have a full-time psychiatrist here is going to open doors for a lot of students,” said Isabelle Ginavan, another member of Student Health Advisory Board. “There’s just not as many resources in Corvallis as there could be, so I think it’s really good.” as there could be, so I think it’s really great for students.

If you’re worried that the center’s proximity to Reser might lead to excessive noise from games on the weekend, Hower said it’s not a concern.

“I came and I tested it out during a spring game,” Hower said. “I came that Saturday and went floor by floor. And it actually wasn’t bad… I did worry about that when we picked this spot, but I think it’s going to be okay.

Since Student Health Services will be closed on the weekend, any extra sports entertainment would really only impact patients seeking medical care over the weekend from Samaritan Health, and even then, the impact will be minimal.

As for the future of Plageman Hall, the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex, a $200 million structure, is being built in the parking lot that Plageman currently resides in.

- Isabelle

“There’s no space for them to have construction trailers on that part of campus, so Plageman is going to become a construction trailer during the time that they’re building that,” Hower said. She said Plageman will eventually be renovated and repurposed for use outside of Student Health Services that is not yet decided upon.

RESEARCH