Student Health continues services during summer


USC Student Health continues to offer health services — albeit with shortened hours — to students throughout the summer, Chief Student Health Officer Dr. Sarah Van Orman said in a briefing with the Daily Trojan Monday.

“We have a little bit shorter hours in terms of only being open until five, and then we only have telehealth on the weekends,” Van Orman said. “But, otherwise, all services are available just as they would be during the rest of the year.”

Students living in California for the summer are eligible to use telehealth services to initiate or continue medical treatment or seek counseling services.

“If there’s something that people have been putting off because they’ve been busy or haven’t had the time during the academic year, we’re open for business,” Van Orman said. “I really encourage people to come in for needed services.”

All of Student Health’s campus tents are now taken down as campus returns to a pre-pandemic normal. Student Health operated more than 15 different tents, tables and setups in parking garages over the course of the pandemic. Walk-up PCR tests are no longer offered, though Student Health will still distribute free antigen tests.

Student Health is still keeping track of coronavirus case counts, Van Orman said, as part of a reminder for students and staff to continue reporting their illness should they be diagnosed with coronavirus. 

“[This will] allow us to provide that notification to other people within the community,” Van Orman said. “For individuals who are at higher risk, this is still a really important illness that can cause significant problems for people who may have high risk medical conditions.”

Van Orman said she hopes that even though pandemic is no longer a public health emergency, people will still take precautions when ill and protect others from contracting illness.

“I hope that’s an idea that stays with us all because we don’t know, right? You never know, is that person sitting next to you taking medicine that suppresses their immune system? Do they have heart disease, do they have lung disease, or do they just not want to get sick?” Van Orman said. “There are things we can do to limit the spread [of viruses].”

As the coronavirus pandemic wanes, the opioid epidemic continues, with the United States recording nearly 110,000 overdose deaths in 2022. 

“We want to remind people, if they themselves are going to be using any kind of drug recreationally, to test it for fentanyl,” Van Orman said, highlighting Student Health’s distribution of fentanyl test strips at their clinic.

Van Orman urged students who don’t use drugs themselves but have friends who do to learn CPR and have Naloxone available. 

“Make sure there are people in the environment who know how to respond to and most importantly, are willing to respond to an emergency,” she said.

Van Orman said she believes it will be difficult to decrease the number of overdose deaths, most of which tend to occur among young adults. 

Campus overdose statistics tend to reflect what happens in the surrounding community, Van Orman said. The University has not seen any overdoses this year, though there was one in 2021 and another in 2022. 

Van Orman believes awareness has increased on campus, partly due to the efforts of student group NaloxoneSC, which is committed to spreading awareness about the dangers of the fentanyl crisis. She cited these efforts as a primary reason for maximizing overdose prevention on campus.

“I come at this from a risk reduction standpoint … because we know that many people at different points in their life, including in college, may choose to use drugs recreationally, and we want them to have the good information to make the right decisions for them,” Van Orman said. “Risk is never zero, but the scales on this have tipped in the last five years.”