Where Are Connecticut’s School-Based Health Centers & How Accessible Are They?

by Krish Bendre and Jamaludeen Mohammed

Last updated on December 4, 2025

for Data Visualization for All
with Prof. Jack Dougherty
Trinity College, Hartford CT, USA

Introduction

Every morning, thousands of students across Connecticut arrive at school carrying more than just their backpacks. For some, it’s an untreated toothache, a prolonged cough, or emotional burdens that make it difficult to focus or stay in class. School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs) were created to meet these needs by providing free or low-cost medical, dental, and mental health services to these children in schools. According to research in the Journal of Adolescent Health (“school attendance”), SBHCs reduces school absences, improves learning conditions, and helps bridge the crucial gaps for families with limited access to healthcare. It is important to note that the SBHCs are different from a regular school nurse’s office, as they function as a comprehensive primary care clinics staffed by medical professionals, and are not limited to providing first aid and basic health support.

But unfortunately, not every student has that access. The accessibility to SBHCs in Connecticut is largely dependent on where a student lives and attends school. One district may be operating multiple SBHCs, giving students quick access to preventive care, while a nearby district may offer none at all. This lack of equal access raises an important question: Where are the SBHCs located, and how accessible are they? Asking this challenges us to think about equity and ways policymakers can bring changes to bridge this gap in access. If the access to SBHCs improves students' academic performance, as well as attendance as the research in the Adolescent Health Journal found, then making SBHCs accessible becomes important; a goal shared by our community partner the Connecticut Association of School Based Health Centers who work to strengthen and expand SBHC access statewide.

This data story explores where SBHCs are located across Connecticut and how many students have access to them. It further explores how many students are left without access to these SBHCs that could potentially shape their health and learning for years to come. To understand these gaps, we used the best available statewide SBHC site data, EdSight School Reports, and official enrollment records (“Enrollment Report”), we mapped which schools have SBHCs and which do not. We found that there are about 335 schools that have SBHCs, and they are spread across over 220 school districts, with access unevenly distributed and mostly clustered heavily in the top 5 largest school districts in Connecticut (Hartford, Bridgeport, Stamford, Waterbury, New Haven), while many suburban and rural districts have none at all.

However, raw counts alone do not fully reflect accessibility because urban districts have higher populations of students, and so a simple count of centers can be misleading. To better understand the true access, we further examined the SBHC distribution, not just based on the counts of SBHCs but with a more comprehensive and normalised metric of SBHCs per 1000 students. This metric accounts for both the number of SBHCs and the size of the student population,thus offering a clearer picture of how many students really have true access. each region can realistically serve. Using this approach helped uncover the accessibility disparities in Connecticut’s School-Based Healthcare system.

Access to SBHCs: About Only One-Third of Connecticut Students Have Coverage

To see an overview of the accessibility of SBHCs across Connecticut, we first examined the number of schools operating SBHCs. Out of 2,336 Connecticut schools in our dataset, only 335 have an SBHC, while 1,995 schools do not. The figure below shows a bar chart which helps highlight this disparity.

Figure 1. Number of Connecticut Schools With and Without SBHCs

While this chart shows the limited number of schools offering SBHCs, it was also important for us to understand how many students actually have access. To see an overview of the student accessibility of SBHCs across Connecticut, we calculated the number of students enrolled in schools with and without SBHCs for the 2024–25 school year. This allows us to see the overall disparity in students access to school-based health services across Connecticut. The chart below gives a clear overview, showing the number of students who benefit and those who are otherwise disadvantaged.

Figure 2. SBHC Access Among Connecticut School Students

Out of Connecticut's 502,507 school students we analyzed, only 184,028 (32.6%) have access to SBHCs, which means about 314,601 students which is about two-thirds or (62.6%) of students do not have SBHC access. These figures make it clear that SBHC access is far from equal among students in Connecticut. With such a small number of schools offering SBHCs, student access becomes a matter of where they happen to live and which school they attend which further highlights the unfortunate gaps in access to preventive care in schools.

Clustering of SBHCs: Mostly Concentrated in Five Urban and Other Large Districts

To understand the gaps in access, we compared all the schools in the state with the list of confirmed SBHC sites in our dataset. Out of the 2,000+ schools in our dataset, many lacked SBHCs despite being in districts where other schools offer the same services, thus creating unequal access even within the same school district. To visualize which schools do and do not offer SBHC services, we mapped every school in the state using the best available data. Figure 3 below shows the distribution of schools across Connecticut, showing whether they do or do not offer SBHC services to students.

Figure 3. Connecticut Schools With And Without SBHCs. Link to interactive map.

With this visualization, it becomes clear that the gap in access is largely due to the majority of schools not offering SBHC services. With such limited schools offering such services, a student’s access to SBHC often depends on which school they attend, even within the same district. This means that two students in the same district could have very different access to preventive care and mental health services in school. It can also be noted from the map that most of the schools with SBHCs are clustered around the 5 largest cities of the state, and are followed by urban centres, while several large rural and suburban regions have no access to schools that offer SBHC services to students at all.

To further understand accessibility better, we broadened our scope and explored the district-level view to examine how SBHC access is distributed across Connecticut school districts. The table below, in Figure 4, shows which districts have SBHCs, how many are located in each district, the table also indicates school districts have none at all.

Figure 4. Connecticut Districts with School-Based Health Centers Link to interactive table.

Mapping this table geographically helps give a better picture. We translated this district-level data onto a map of Connecticut, shown in Figure 5 below. The choropleth map uses the Unified School District Map 2025, the most complete and consistent geographic boundary dataset currently available for statewide visualization. While this polygon layer does not capture every small or non-unified district with perfect precision, it remains the best available option for representing overall geographic trends. This map makes it easier to see regional concentrations, gaps, and the concentration of SBHCs in the unified school districts across Connecticut. In the map below, we see trends of SBHCs being clustered around large urban districts, with Hartford and New Haven being the darkest colored polygons, indicating higher SBHC counts.

Figure 5. Connecticut Districts with SBHC Totals. Link to interactive map.

From these figures, we can see that Hartford leads with 21 SBHCs serving 15,782 students, followed by New Haven with 20 SBHC serving 18,144 students. The visualization reveals a clear pattern of how SBHCs in Connecticut are mostly concentrated in the large urban districts particularly the five major urban districts – Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, New Haven, and Stamford. In addition, semi-urban districts show mixed patterns: Bloomfield, Groton, and Stratford have multiple SBHCs, but at the same time, some urban adjacent districts such as Milford, West Hartford, and Fairfield have surprisingly no SBHC at all. Also, many rural and small town districts have few or no access to SBHCs at all.

While the largest urban districts have the highest number of SBHCs, they also carry the burden of having a significantly higher number of students who attend those schools. The higher number of SBHCs in these districts does not simply indicate greater funding or development, but it is also driven by their high student populations. For example, while Hartford and New Haven have some of the largest numbers of SBHCs in the state, they also serve approximately 15,782 and 18,144 students, respectively.

Disproportionate Access to SBHCs: Per 1,000 Students Reveals Hidden Inequities

Given that the SBHC counts are not solely related to urbanisation and development, but the actual enrolled population, using student enrollment as a criterion will help us better analyse the accessibility of school-based health services across Connecticut. Thus, using a metric of ‘SBHC-per-1000-students’ can reveal a different story to better understand how many students are actually getting access, and those who are void of it.

To better understand how access differs when we take student population into account, we calculated SBHCs per 1,000 students for each district. The table in Figure 6 below shows that some smaller districts, despite having fewer SBHCs, actually have higher access relative to their student population.

Figure 6. Access to SBHC per 1000 students among Connecticut Schools. Link to interactive table.

The table makes the differences visible, showing how the accessibility rank of districts rises or falls once student enrollment is taken into account. While the urban and large districts of Hartford and New Haven no longer appear at the top because their high student populations significantly diminish their access rate, several smaller and mid-sized districts, in fact, give better SBHC access to students. School districts such as Sharon, North Canaan, and Winchester visibly provide better access despite having far fewer total SBHCs. At the same time, many smaller towns with only one SBHC, and in many cases none at all, remain clustered at the bottom, revealing gaps in SBHC access. This normalization helps paint a clearer picture of which students across the state actually benefit from higher access. We then translated the normalized data into the map below in Figure 7 and compared it with the trends in Figure 5. The map reveals a new pattern that appears to contradict the earlier geographical trends in Figure 2. The concentration of access is not around the five and other large urban distrcits but rather spread across several small to medium-sized districts.

Figure 7. Connecticut Districts with SBHCs per 1000 students. Link to interactive map.

Larger districts like Hartford and New Haven have access rates of 1.33 and 1.1 SBHCs per 1,000 students, whereas smaller and unified districts such as Sharon, Portland and Winchester have much higher rates of 10.31, 4.06 and 3.44, respectively. This shows that accessibility is not solely about the number of SBHCs but the number of students who benefit. However, it is also not always the case that districts with lower student populations are always accessible, because several smaller towns have rates that fall below 1 SBHC per 1000 students, and a fair number of these smaller and rural districts do not have access to school based health centers at all. The absence of such important services raises concerns about regional equity and whether resources are being distributed where the needs are greatest or simply where systems already exist.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Taken together, these findings point to the need for a more calculated approach to the distribution and accessibility of School-Based Health Centers. Simply adding more centers would not guarantee better access if the student populations remain disproportionate in every district. Going forward and rethinking access, the per 1000 student rates can serve as a comprehensive tool for state agencies, districts, and community partners to identify the most inaccessible areas, especially the smaller towns that have no SBHC services at all. By directing future investment and funding toward regions with the greatest gaps, and not just the largest districts, Connecticut can move closer to a school-health infrastructure that is far more equitable, accessible, and focused on the actual needs.

Methods

We began our analysis by cleaning our dataset of Connecticut School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs) provided by our professor, Jack Dougherty, and organized by Allison MacDougall. This dataset identified which schools operate an SBHC, as well as the towns and districts in which these schools are located. We used the XLOOKUP function to match the schools with SBHCs and those without SBHCs. After that, we used “Yes” for schools that we found have SBHCs and “No” for those that do not have.

After preparing our cleaned dataset, we used pivot tables in Google Sheets to summarize school-level and district-level totals, calculate enrollment with and without SBHC access, and organize everything for clearer visualization across multiple tabs. We imported the data into Datawrapper to create both school-level and district-level maps, including a point map showing individual school access, a choropleth showing district-level patterns, and a sortable interactive table displaying SBHC counts, enrollment, and SBHCs per 1,000 students. For the geographic mapping, we used the Connecticut map provided by our professor, which included detailed polygon boundaries for the state’s five largest cities, so we could more accurately layer and highlight geographic trends. We further used the Datawrapper’s Unified School District Map 2025, which happens to be the standardized and best available option in outlining the school district polygons of Connecticut. The Unified School District Map 2025 includes fewer districts and also hides several, because it is based on the larger overview of unified districts. However, despite its limitations, the map used ensures consistency across all visualizations and official boundaries.

While working with such extensive data, some schools in our dataset were not listed in the EdSight enrollment data, and so we did not add them to our calculations. There are also reasons why enrollment data is masked on official portals, and these gaps have to be overlooked in our calculations. Moreover, our maps assume that students use the SBHC located in the school they attend. However, in real life, some students may receive care at a center outside their district. Our visualizations cannot fully capture these cross-district patterns, so actual access may differ slightly from what the map shows. But despite these uncertainties, the combined methods we used do provide a reliable foundation for understanding SBHC distribution and access across Connecticut.

Works Cited:

“School Attendance Following Receipt of Care From a School-Based Health Center.” Journal of Adolescent Health, vol. 73, no. 6, 2023, pp. S1054–S1062. Elsevier, doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2023.07.012. Epub 2023 Sep 13. PMID: 37702648. . Accessed 19 Nov. 2025.

“Enrollment Report” EdSight – Connecticut’s Official Source for Education Data, State of Connecticut, CT.gov, https://public-edsight.ct.gov/students/enrollment-dashboard/enrollment-report-legacy?language=en_US . Accessed 19 Nov. 2025.