by Jiho Jack Moon and Amanda Rose Geller
Last updated on December 4th, 2025
for Data Visualization for Allwith Prof. Jack DoughertyTrinity College, Hartford CT, USA
Across Connecticut, many students navigate their school days carrying more than backpacks—they carry obstacles that make basic healthcare difficult to access. Some lack insurance, others can’t get to appointments, and many wait weeks for openings that never come soon enough. School Based Health Centers (SBHCs) disrupt this pattern by placing medical, dental, and mental health services directly where students already are. When care is woven into the school environment, barriers that once felt immovable suddenly shrink, creating a clearer path for students to receive support they might otherwise go without.
In Connecticut, the Connecticut Association of School Based Health Centers (CASBHC) defines SBHCs as “comprehensive primary health care facilities licensed as outpatient clinics or as hospital satellites…located within or on school grounds and serve students in grades pre-K–12.” These centers differ from school nurse offices, though collaboration between the two is common. SBHCs provide medical, dental, and mental health services that support students across a wide range of needs. For our project, we are analyzing the hours of care across more than 300 SBHCs to address two key questions for CASBHC:
1) How do hours of operation vary across Connecticut?
2) Is there a relationship between hours open and indicators of community need such as free or reduced-price lunch eligibility?
By examining patterns in service availability, our goal was to identify areas where students may face reduced access to school-based healthcare and to help CASBHC better understand whether certain communities encounter gaps in SBHC availability.
Our investigation of the data resulted in two major findings. First, we found that SBHC operating hours vary widely across Connecticut, with many centers offering far fewer than the maximum weekly hours and clustering around the 30–36-hour range. Second, our analysis shows that weekly operating hours have only a weak relationship to student socioeconomic need, and higher-hour centers are concentrated mainly in urban districts. By examining these patterns in service availability, our data story identifies areas where students may face reduced access to essential school-based healthcare.
As with any dataset, no data is perfect. SBHC schedules are reported in very different ways. We found three types of problems that led us to question the quality of the data for SBHC services and hours. First, some SBHCs list multiple services but provide no operating hours—for example, Mountain View School in the Bristol School District reports offering medical, mental health, and dental services but lists no hours at all. A second problem is that some SBHCs provide generalized hours but do not specify which services they offer, creating uncertainty about the actual availability of care. A third issue involves improbable or inconsistent combinations of services and hours, such as centers listing a wide range of services despite very limited operating time. All of these issues raise questions about data accuracy. By acknowledging these inconsistencies, we can accept that no dataset is perfect and continue to work with the best available information.
To take caution, we flagged 10 SBHCs with questionably reported hours and services, and called each school’s phone number to directly ask for clarification. Out of the ten schools called, only one of them was able to confirm our exact data, as shown in the table below.
Figure 2: Explore the interactive chart Responses from 10 randomly selected schools. School(s) with confirmed services and hours are highlighted in green.
However, these verifications do not suggest the entire dataset is wrong; instead, they highlight CASBHC’s need for more consistent, higher-quality data entries on SBHC hours and services in order to carry out its work effectively. The dataset is still trustworthy, but the inconsistencies we identified reveal where reporting practices falter. These gaps reflect broader challenges in how SBHCs communicate their schedules and services, illustrating the growing pains of a system that is still developing. Even inconsistent findings are meaningful ones, as they pinpoint areas where SBHCs can improve as healthcare systems and increase support for SBHC advocacy.
We calculated total SBHC operating hours using the schools that reported their days and hours. Reported hours were grouped into ranges (6–33, 33–35, 35–50), and we used the median value of 35 hours to represent each range, allowing us to compare how many schools operated above or below this benchmark.
Figure 3: Explore the interactive chart Table of defining hours of SBHCs. Used the median of 35 hours standardized the data, improved accuracy by excluding blank reports and extreme outliers, and allowed meaningful comparison across schools.
Weekly SBHC hours show a weak positive correlation with free and reduced-price lunch eligibility and centers operating 35 or more hours per week are concentrated mainly in major urban districts. This pattern suggests that operational capacity is shaped more by geographic and structural factors than by socioeconomic indicators alone. The widespread presence of sub-maximum operating hours across SBHCs indicates limited access for many students, highlighting the need to understand how these variations affect the availability of essential school-based healthcare.
Figure 4: Explore the interactive chart Total weekly operating hours of SBHCs across five biggest cities and CT.
The map illustrates clear geographic clustering in the weekly operating hours of School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs) across Connecticut, showing that longer service availability is concentrated in the state’s major urban districts. Darker markers—representing centers offering around 35 or more hours per week—are especially prominent in Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, Stamford, and Waterbury, suggesting that these cities maintain relatively robust operational capacity compared to surrounding towns. In contrast, many of the lighter-colored points appear in more suburban or rural areas, indicating shorter weekly hours and potentially more limited access for students in those regions. This spatial pattern implies that while urban districts may be better equipped to sustain extended operating times, smaller communities may face structural or resource-related constraints that result in reduced service availability.
Figure 5: Explore the interactive chart Median total weekly operating hours of five biggest cities and across CT schools with SBHCs.
This table reinforces the geographic pattern observed in the map by providing a clear numerical comparison of operating hours across Connecticut. The median weekly hours for SBHCs located in the state’s five largest cities—Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, Stamford, and Waterbury—reach 35 hours, which exceeds the statewide median of 33 hours and 45 minutes. Although the difference appears modest, it highlights a consistent tendency for urban SBHCs to offer slightly longer service availability than centers in other towns. Presenting the medians alongside the visual map strengthens the argument that larger cities maintain more extensive operational capacity, suggesting that urban districts may have greater staffing, resources, or demand that supports these longer hours.
Figure 6: Explore the interactive chart Scatterplot looking at the relationship between SBHC operation hours and percentage of free/reduced price lunch availability.
This scatter plot shows a weak positive relationship between a community’s need—measured by the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals—and the weekly operating hours of School-Based Health Centers. While the upward-sloping trend line indicates that centers in higher-need communities tend to offer slightly more hours, the wide spread of points reveals substantial variability. Many schools with similar levels of economic need provide very different operating hours, and several SBHCs in high-need areas still operate for only limited hours per week. This pattern suggests that although need may influence operational capacity to some extent, it is not the primary factor shaping service availability. Instead, the weak correlation implies that other structural or district-level factors—such as staffing, funding availability, or local administrative decisions may play a stronger role in determining how long SBHCs remain open each week.
As stated above, our findings showed that SBHC operating hours have a weak positive correlation with free and reduced-price lunch eligibility. The calculated correlation coefficient was 0.180, which aligns with the understanding that “correlation coefficients appear on a scale from –1 to 0 to 1, where the extremes show very strong relationships (negative or positive), while values near zero show no relationship” (Dougherty and Ilyankou).
In regards to verifying the questionable data, we balanced these discrepancies by making assumptions with the available data. As discussed, some SBHCs reported their days and hours differently or not at all. We had to make assumptions that if days and/or hours were not listed, then a standard Monday - Friday with hours from around 8am - 3pm were instated as the default. Other schools list generalized hours, or even failed to specify the offered services. In addition to this, some SBHCs are listed with improbable combinations of hours and services which we flagged to further investigate. For example, one listing stated that they had a mobile dental service available Monday through Friday during daytime school hours, though those vehicles are designed to move between different schools throughout the day. Therefore, we can conclude this report may be inaccurate. We took this approach to call the ten flagged schools.
Using the standardized hours as seen in the table above (Defining the Hours), we were able to divide the total schools’ hours into ranges of equal thirds based on the median which we calculated to be 35 hours. We established that the range of hours in the lower third is 6-33 hours, the middle third is 33-35 hours, and the upper third is 35-50 hours. This represents the distribution of operation hours that vary across SBHCs.
To understand how SBHCs vary by hours of operation, we looked at data from over 300 schools across Connecticut provided by CASBHC. These are schools that have a school based health center available on site, across several districts. Because each school reports its schedule differently, the raw numbers and findings required lots of “cleaning up” in order for us to sort this data as meaningfully and accurately as possible. The cleanup process included using the X-Lookup tool in Google Sheets to correctly match each school to its district, organization code, sponsored agency, and finally each SBHC’s operation days and hours.
To calculate the total operating hours of each SBHC, we created a spreadsheet using Google Sheets to organize over 300 schools. We logged their hours from beginning to end on each day Monday - Friday. Then, we made a new column to use as the calculator. We devised a formula to calculate how many hours per week each SBHC was operating. The formula in spreadsheet terms is = (E2-D2)+(G2-F2)+(I2-H2)+(K2-J2)+(M2-L2). Translation: Each day’s closing time minus the opening time, then adding each day’s total hours together to get the weekly total hours.
To prepare the data for this scatter plot, we first removed all schools that reported zero weekly operating hours. This step was necessary because many of these zero values did not reflect actual service availability but instead indicated missing or unconfirmed reporting. Including them would have introduced noise into the dataset and distorted the relationship between community need and SBHC operating hours by clustering a large number of points at zero that were not meaningful observations. By filtering out these unverified entries, the analysis focuses only on schools with confirmed hours, allowing the scatter plot to more accurately represent patterns in operational capacity and provide a clearer view of how hours vary across communities.
“Connecticut Association of School Based Health Centers." Accessed 1 Dec. 2025., https://ctschoolhealth.org/.
Dougherty, Jack, and Ilyankou, Ilya. "Hands-On Data Visualization." 2021, https://handsondataviz.org/.
“Enrollment Dashboard.” CT.Gov EdSight, https://public-edsight.ct.gov/students/enrollment-dashboard?language=en_US. Accessed 19 Nov. 2025.