Ten days after his re-election to Congress, U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-Moline) toured the new health clinic at Rock Island High School, on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.
In late August, Rock Island High School celebrated the opening of its new School Health Link clinic, marking an important milestone in the Rock Island-Milan School District's commitment to supporting the health and well-being of scholars.
Located inside the school, off the main entrance, the new clinic expands access to convenient, high-quality healthcare for scholars and their families through a partnership with School Health Link.
The clinic provides preventive and acute medical care, referrals, and other health-related services for children and adolescents.
By bringing healthcare directly into the school setting, the partnership helps remove barriers that can prevent scholars from receiving timely care while supporting attendance, wellness, and academic success.
“If a student isn't healthy in school, they're not going to learn,” Sorensen said after his tour Friday. “So with School Health Link, to be able to have the place and the experts here to offer care. The thing that struck me was to do a strep test. A student comes in with a sore throat. Okay, mom or dad might just say, keep working, go do your thing, right? But in here, you may have somebody that says, let's give you a strep test. Okay, the strep test comes up positive, you have strep.
“Now the Health Link here at Rock Island High School then puts in the prescription so that mom or dad can come and pick up the student, go through the drive-through at the pharmacy, and then the kid can be better in a day or two and not spread strep throughout the school,” he said.
“We can make this a model for what is really, really good, making sure that we have access to care. And so when I fight for healthcare, this is it. It's making sure that people have a connection to healthcare no matter who they are.
“I think that's just part of who we are as people. We want to make sure that our community and our neighbors are taken care of,” Sorensen said, noting the clinic visit is much less expensive than a visit to urgent care or an ER. “There was a student that needed stitches just a couple of days ago. Well, that student that needed stitches got them here for $30, versus having to go to Trinity, sit in the ED for four hours, and then have a $1,000 bill that moms and dads can't pay for. This keeps money in people's pockets too.”
“If I was a parent and I had students that were here at Rocky, I would feel really good that there was School Health Link here, much like there is in Moline,” he said. “Because there's somebody there to take care of my kid if something goes wrong or if they get sick at school. And then it allows the parents or the guardians to be able to say, okay, now I'm gonna go and do the things to provide for my family while my student is learning.”
Health Link clinic tour
Sorensen was shown around Friday by Lindsey Leighty, registered nurse and School Health Link supervisor. They’ve had a health clinic at Moline High School since 2022.
School Health Link added a nurse practitioner and certified medical assistant to the existing two RIHS nurses, who are paid through the school district. They have two exam rooms and can do in-house lab testing. They’ve had 165 appointments (including vaccinations) since opening, a little over half of those have been Rocky students.
And a third of the population seen at Moline’s clinic are Rocky students, even since the Rock Island clinic opened.
Deisy Rodriguez Olvera, the Moline nurse practitioner, has an established practice, Leighty said later Friday. Jill Clong is the Rocky Health Link NP.
“Deisy just in general a very good human and her patients love her,” Leighty said. “She really cares. She really cares about these people, you know what I mean? She goes above and beyond for them. She answers for them. She takes the time with them.”
“Even if Jill is a 10 out of 10 too, they just don't want to leave,” she said of Rocky kids. “So we've had some trouble kind of what we thought would be a little bit easier to keep this office a little bit more busy while it was building its own clientele, and then also decrease some of the load over there. That really hasn't panned out the way I thought it would. So I'm gonna have to make some adjustments.”
“Since we've been here, it really just enhances communication. It really just creates a really open dialogue between what a student may need and where our limitations are, but what we may be able to do to work together to make a plan. So that part has been amazing,” Leighty told Sorensen.
“With the Moline office being already open, we already have that streamlined and an established group of patients. So essentially we are taking the kids that are usually seen in Moline that are Rock Island residents and pushing them over to this clinic. And then if we're full, then they're pushing kids over here.”
Unlike the Moline clinic (which received Illinois Department of Public Health funds to get started), School Health Link found Illinois funding wasn’t available, she said.
“Funds had been reallocated on the federal level to other places. Which, that's the name of the game,” Leighty said. “We work really closely with the local grantors, so Quad City Community Foundation, Moline Foundation, Rock Island Community Foundation. Even Rock Island's Education Foundation, so specific to this district, donated money to just help get this clinic up and running. So it's a real commitment from all of the stakeholders deciding that this is important enough to make happen.”
“One of our major components of what we do is physicals, immunizations, making sure that kids are meeting those state-mandated requirements,” she said, in addition to treating illnesses and injuries.
Open to any kids and young adults in county
The Rocky clinic is open to anyone age 0-22 in Rock Island County, on weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., including when school is not in session, Leighty said. Moline’s hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
“Not only do we not have a limit on the number of Medicaid clients that we'll see; most offices will cap Medicaid clients. We also offer the services on a discounted sliding scale,” she said, noting most visits are $30 to $60 depending on family income and size.
“That $60 is the most you're gonna pay. That's affordable,” she said. “You go to urgent care and they want you to pay $180 out of pocket, it's just not affordable. And because we are grant-funded, and we also work on a board of directors who is very mission-driven, so they're not— they're just not concerned about the profits. It's like if the kids can't pay for it, then we just eat the cost.”
Last year, the Moline clinic gave away over $100,000 worth of services, Leighty said.
“That's whether they were discounted or just simply written off, because we don't send anybody to collections,” she said. “So we make sure to tell our families that. You know, it's like if the visit's $30, if you have $5, pay $5. You know what I mean? The kid can come regardless.”
“They don't have that much. And so I think for me, the part that I'm obviously very passionate about what we do, I love what we do,” Leighty said. “There's a soft spot in my heart for like working poor. And I think that's just because that's how I grew up. Like my family wasn't poor. They had jobs, they worked, we had things.”
Sorensen said he could definitely relate to high medical bills.
“There's always a bill that's going to sit on the counter. And I've been there,” he said. “I'm like, I can't open that bill. I don't even— yeah, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Oh my God, I can't. I cannot deal with that right now.”
“But if the only place for a kid to get stitches is at the hospital with a $1,000 bill, and mom and dad have all of the bills that are stacked up on the counter, you're the only one,” Sorensen said of the need for the school clinic.
Leighty noted access to care is an issue, especially with lab testing, adding the Rock Island UnityPoint Health lab is only open until 2:30 p.m.
“It’s the same as what we're all experiencing where it's not enough staff, everybody is overworked,” she said. “To be closed at 2:30, it's like, what do you want parents to do? Like, I mean, I have a good job, but I work till 4. That's just the reality. But this is a place that can meet the need.”
“We would rather the kid get the care, you know. And again, local grantors, like the Rauch Foundation, they had granted us money. So we've done things like, we had a kid come through emancipated, no insurance, who’s asthmatic,” Leighty said. “We went and bought him his inhalers and a script of nebulizers, bought a new nebulizer machine. Because at the end of the day, at least I can go to sleep knowing that he has the best."
“And we have a board and people that run our agency that are very supportive of that,” she said. “They want us to be helpful. That makes this job way easier. I don't have to convince anybody to do the right thing. They see the value in helping them, it's like they already see it. Even the district, like Rock Island District, they love their kids. Moline District, they love their kids.”
School Health Link is also working to do outreach visits to schools in East Moline, Silvis, Colona, Hampton and the Riverdale district, she added.
Whereas Moline originally got $230,000 a year from the state to operate its clinic, School Health Link raised about $60,000 from other sources to start this year, Leighty said.
“School Health Link staff is totally separate from the Rock Island-Milan School District staff,” she said. “It is a partnership between us to occupy the same space. They are graciously hosting us here, but as far as any type of the funding that they get maybe from different sources that is not in our pool of funding. Any funding that I have said, that would be specific to School Health Link that was granted through community, the Rock Island Community Foundation, Quad City Community Foundation, Moline Foundation.”
Congressional recognition
Sorensen presented her with a framed certificate that recognizes School Health Link from the Congress, “so you and your team can be proud of, but that students can be proud of it too,” he said. “That they are supported and you are supported.”
The certificate (signed by Sorensen) is “in recognition of outstanding and invaluable service to the community.”
Leighty really appreciated the Congressman’s visit.
“I'm always looking for more federal funding. I mean, honestly, I do want him to understand better what we do,” she said. “Not just because it's important, because it is important, right? There are federal dollars that are available for certain niches of things, and it's like I'm just trying to get a piece of that.”
“I'm not really asking for anything. I believe in the product that we deliver,” Leighty said. “I know that the staff I have and the girls I have do a good job. They treat these people with respect and dignity and the way that they should always be treated without any thought to it. But that's not, that's not the way the world works.
“If there are federal dollars like he was talking about as far as these student loan situations go, if that is available to people that work at community healthcare, why is that not available to the staff that work here?” she said. “We service the same clientele, discounted services, Medicaid clients, English as a second language. Like, those are our populations.
“I want us to have enough funding to do what we do,” she added. “Healthcare is changing. The cost that it takes to provide the care is increasing and increasing.”
Sorensen is thrilled the Democrats will be back in control of Congress come Jan. 3, and he wants restoration of funding to reverse Medicaid cuts made by Republicans.
“How important Medicaid is, especially in our rural hometowns. We have hospitals that are on the brink of closing down in our district today because of the Medicaid cuts,” he said. “So in Congress, we've got to get those back because it means that we keep our rural healthcare. If we don't have rural healthcare, let me just tell you, people are going to exit. They're going to leave. And I don't want to see people leave because we have a really great way of life here.”
In the next Congress, he told the clinic staff, Sorensen plans to sit on the committee that has jurisdiction over healthcare.
“One of the things that I'd like— that we're working on, because it takes years to do legislation, not months, not weeks, but what if the federal government had a pool that was available for your future staff?” he said. “Healthcare is really expensive to be able to go into that education. So what if the federal government at the back end of your education went and said, okay, if you come to community-funded healthcare or the VA health system or rural healthcare, then if you can give five years of concurrent service, then the federal government should come back and say, we're going to take your loan away. Thank you for your service.”
“That would go leaps and bounds in order to attract people to this kind of location,” Leighty said. “Because they know walking into it that they're not going to get rich working here. They know that. Like, the people that work here, they work here because they have a real passion for the things that we do, and that's important. But one thing that people that don't have student loans don't understand is what a financial burden that actually is.”
Leighty is currently working with the Silvis School District superintendent to open up a new clinic there, starting on a mobile basis.
“One of our biggest hurdles is like making sure that people know the service exists and how to actually utilize it. But those clinics, we service a lot of kids that way,” she said. “Instead of having the next site be so permanent, to me, I feel like those smaller schools— Silvis, Hampton, Carbon Cliff, Colona, Riverdale— it's like they're not gonna have enough student population to help. Although we want to do good, it's like at the end of the day, this is still business. We got to make money. We got to make enough money to at least pay the bills and survive.”
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