Pediatrician and philanthropist, Priscilla Chan and her husband Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are planning to open an innovative tuition-free private school in Palo Alto, California. ‘The Primary School,’ as it is named, is a tuition-free school, modeled after the Codman Academy in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which provides integrated education and healthcare services to students and their families from birth to high school.
After rotations at the Codman Academy, Chan realized the necessity of linking healthcare and education. On her Facebook page Chan wrote: “My experiences of running an after school program in a low-income housing project and working as a pediatrician in a safety-net hospital [have] shown me firsthand that we need a better way of caring for and educating our children.”
We at The Margolin Group agree. We believe there is no single-thread solution to improving the lives of underserved students. Rather, organizations must come together, in partnership, to address all of the social determinants of health. TMG considers access to high-quality healthcare for children to be one of the nation’s highest priorities. We fully support the efforts of Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan, and we applaud them for their visionary leadership and heartfelt dedication to needs of the next generation.