Schoolchildren across Southeast Ohio will gain new places to see a doctor, a dentist and an eye specialist without leaving campus, under a rural health plan of more than $55 million announced by Gov. Mike DeWine and the Ohio Department of Health, according to a release from the Governor’s Office.
The money comes from the federal Rural Health Transformation Program and is aimed at children and families in rural Ohio. The Governor’s Office release divides the investment into three parts: more than $20 million for school-based health centers, more than $18 million to expand the OhioSEE vision program to all 88 counties, and more than $17 million for the new OhioDENTAL program. The release does not break the funding down by individual county or site.
Southeast Ohio is one of the plan’s biggest beneficiaries. The Governor’s Office listed new school-based health center sites in Scioto, Guernsey, Lawrence, Morgan, Perry and Washington counties, with two new sites each in Noble and Washington counties. Those centers provide primary care on campus, cutting the class time students lose to off-site appointments, and they also serve members of the surrounding community, according to the release.
Existing school-based health centers in the region will also share in expansion and continued-operation funding. The Governor’s Office list includes centers in Athens, Belmont, Coshocton, Harrison, Lawrence, Muskingum, Pike, Ross, Scioto and Washington counties, along with two in Gallia County, five in Ross County, three in Muskingum County and eight in Jefferson County. In all, the plan funds 17 new sites in 15 counties and supports 49 existing centers in 25 counties.
The need the centers answer is easy to picture in the region’s hill country. In many Southeast Ohio communities, the nearest pediatric practice can be a long drive over two-lane roads, and a routine appointment can cost a parent a full day of work and a student a full day of class. Putting primary care inside the school building is the state’s attempt to close that distance — the same access problem Ohio’s growing investment in campus health facilities, such as Ohio State’s newly completed $1.5 billion University Hospital tower in Columbus, addresses at the hospital end of the system.
The vision piece, OhioSEE, began in January as a 15-county pilot serving grades K–3 and is now operating in 252 public school districts, with 91 percent of eligible pilot districts enrolled, according to the Governor’s Office. Under the expansion, it will reach all 88 counties and serve students in kindergarten through 12th grade in the 73 Rural Health Transformation-eligible counties. The model brings a mobile vision van or a roll-on, roll-off clinic to the school, where an optometrist gives a comprehensive exam and provides glasses when a student needs them.
OhioDENTAL applies the same idea to teeth. The new program, modeled on OhioSEE, will use mobile dental vehicles and temporary in-school clinics to provide comprehensive dental services, with referrals to brick-and-mortar dental clinics when follow-up care is needed, according to the Governor’s Office. The plan also funds oral-health training for primary-care professionals and a collaborative effort to increase the number of dentists who accept Medicaid. The release noted that Ohio lags other states on preventive dental visits, according to the 2024 National Survey of Children’s Health.
“The Rural Health Transformation Program has been instrumental in helping us to bring critical healthcare services to many more Ohioans,” DeWine said in the Governor’s Office release. “These funds will also expand school-based health centers and increase much-needed access to dental services.” Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said in the same release that creating programs like OhioDENTAL “will be a real game-changer and lead to a healthier Ohio.”
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: the statewide totals and the county lists above come directly from the Governor’s Office release, and the project is supported by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as part of a financial assistance award totaling $202,030,262.02, fully funded by CMS, according to the release. Ohio announced in December 2025 that it had received more than $200 million in Rural Health Transformation awards overall, and earlier rounds included $10 million for workforce, $3.15 million for pharmacy connectivity and $92 million for preventive, primary, maternal and behavioral care. What we’re still waiting on: the per-site dollar amounts, the specific schools chosen in each Southeast county, and opening dates for the new centers — none of which the announcement specifies.
What happens next is a local build-out. School districts and their health-care partners in the named counties will site the new centers, staff them and set the schedules for the OhioSEE vision visits and the first OhioDENTAL clinics. Families in Scioto, Guernsey, Lawrence, Morgan, Noble, Perry, Washington and the region’s other listed counties should watch their districts for enrollment and consent information as those plans are announced.