Collaboration grows to six clinics in South Texas, seventh on the way
Contact: Steven Lee, (210) 450-3823, lees22@uthscsa.edu
SAN ANTONIO, Feb. 4, 2025 – In just five years as a designated Foster Care Center of Excellence, the Wellness 360 pediatric practice at UT Health San Antonio’s School of Nursing has grown to six locations in South Texas, providing primary health care to children in foster care and their families.
And it has done so largely through collaboration with community partners and group homes, from New Braunfels to Crystal City, with a seventh location on the way.

“It’s a center, but a center spread out,” said Karen Walker Schwab, PhD, APRN, CPNP-PC, clinical associate professor and director of Wellness 360 pediatric services for the School of Nursing. “It’s really an infrastructure we’re building in the region so these kids can have a stable medical home, even if their placement changes.”
That infrastructure is why Superior HealthPlan, which recognized UT Health San Antonio with its Center of Excellence designation in December 2019, is highlighting the local effort for its success. The School of Nursing owns one of 10 Foster Care Center of Excellence designations in the state, and is the only one in South Texas, from Superior, the managed care organization that provides health care coverage for children and youth in foster care statewide.
“Children in foster care generally have more complex care needs,” said Nathan Hoover, vice president of behavioral health operations for Superior. “That’s where these Centers of Excellence come into play. Having local partnerships like the one with UT Health San Antonio help provide streamlined access to critical services for what it takes to care for our members.”
Superior created its Center of Excellence program in 2017, requiring designees to meet more than 30 criteria, including quality improvement initiatives, program processes and staff requirements for providing health care services for children and youth in foster care. UT Health San Antonio’s Wellness 360 center is the only one in the state that is nurse practitioner-led and -managed.
An evolving collaboration
It started with its Wellness 360 pediatric practice at the School of Nursing on UT Health San Antonio’s Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Campus. Schwab’s team began meeting with community providers of foster care services and offered primary care to them at their campus clinic.
After a year or two, some of those providers started reaching out to Wellness 360 to operate clinics at their sites. Soon, the team had three on-site clinics spread across two counties. A grant helped expand those services to six locations. And the school has a mobile unit that can extend service even farther.
“I think the reason Superior is so proud of our partnership is because of the way we have evolved,” Schwab said.
The foster partners handle the adoptions, placement services, foster pairing, licensing and support, and a few are group or residential treatment homes, with counseling, psychiatric care and other social services.
“But we are the only ones who do the health care piece,” Schwab said. “We wanted to make sure it was patient-centered, so that we try to do as much of the labs and paperwork that’s required in-house.
“We try to think of everything we can do to make it easy on the families, like having several siblings in at once instead of making them come back,” she said. “We do it all at one time, for everything including ADHD treatment. We do a lot of behavioral health in the clinic, which a lot of primary care clinics don’t do, including psychotropic medication prescriptions.”
The facilities typically are either community clinics in a rural underserved area or private clinics at a group home setting.
The school’s Wellness 360 clinic in New Braunfels is rented space in a community center that’s open to the general population, mostly rural, in partnership with foster care partner SJRC. Grant funding was used to seed the operation, but it’s being built out to be self-sustaining.
The building is a family resource center that provides parenting classes and other services for families who are fostering and adopting. And the families can bring their children to the Wellness 360 clinic there.
Also in Comal County, in Bulverde, and in partnership with SJRC, Wellness 360 operates a clinic providing primary care integrated with behavioral health services for adolescent residents.
In San Antonio, and under a private contract with Respite Care of San Antonio in Monte Vista, Wellness 360 provides primary care in a clinic on site for foster children living there. The team also extends care to families from the community affiliated with Respite Care’s daycare operation, as well as with Parent Night Out and Family Night Out events.
“That one’s busy and pretty dynamic,” Schwab said. “It represents a lot of collaboration because we work closely to do care coordination and case management. We work with their team in the same building; I can walk upstairs and talk to the CEO. And we know the kids very well.”
Wellness 360 provides similar services at the Children’s Shelter in San Antonio, where the team works with foster families to provide services to children in their care.
And the clinic in rural Crystal City, like New Braunfels, is in a community center with primary care services open to the public. The building is larger than the one in New Braunfels, and owned by Family Service, which leases space to the school and other community partners.
SJRC is a tenant in the same building, so patients can access both its and Wellness 360’s services at one location. Like the New Braunfels clinic, telehealth services also are available.
Wellness 360 is targeting areas of south and east Bexar County for its seventh Foster Care Center of Excellence location.
For more information on the School of Nursing Wellness 360 clinic’s services for foster children and families, visit https://wellness360.uthealthsa.org/3in30/. For more on Superior’s Foster Care Center of Excellence program, visit https://coe.fostercaretx.com/.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio), a primary driver of San Antonio’s $44.1 billion health care and biosciences sector, is the largest academic research institution in South Texas with an annual research portfolio of more than $436 million. Driving substantial economic impact with its six professional schools, a diverse workforce of more than 9,400, an annual expense budget of $1.67 billion and clinical practices that provide 2.5 million patient visits each year, UT Health San Antonio plans continued growth over the next five years and anticipates adding more than 1,500 higher-wage jobs to serve San Antonio, Bexar County and the South Texas region. To learn about the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit UTHealthSA.org.
The UT Health San Antonio School of Nursing offers five academic programs, consisting of the BSN, DNP and PhD degrees and specialty certificates, and is dedicated to fostering diversity, equity and inclusion in the nursing profession. First-generation college students represent one-third of its enrollment. The School of Nursing also operates a growing patient-care practice that provides primary and acute care by nurse practitioners, both on campus and at a variety of community partner sites. To learn more, visit https://www.uthscsa.edu/academics/nursing.
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