Chapter 28The Vital Role of School-Based Health Centers in Creating a Violence-Free School Environment

Abstract

Every day 160,000 students in grades K-12 miss school or leave early due to bullying and violence. 1 Half of students responding to the Ethics of American Youth Survey in 2010 admitted that they bullied someone in the past year; nearly half say they were bullied, teased, or taunted in a way that seriously upset them. 2 Students who are repeatedly bullied receive poorer grades and participate less in class discussions. 3 One-third of all high school students say that violence is a big problem at their school, and one in four say they do not feel very safe at school. 3

Utilizing Student Health and Academic Data: A County-Level Demonstration Project

“…The extent to which integration of academic records and student health data is occurring routinely in school systems is unknown, and there are very few examples in the research literature. A 2013 report documented the experiences of Cincinnati, East Baton Rouge, Miami–Dade County, and Seattle in linking data sets from school-based health centers (SBHCs) and schools (Wright, Zimmerman, & Knott, 2013). Each community was at a different point on the continuum of linking health data with academic data.…”

“…The health data that are entered from school nurses are “partitioned and blocked from the academic data for nonauthorized users such as school staff unless consent is obtained.” Since health data are entered into a student’s record, they are portable (e.g., available at a new school after a move) and retained over time. Information regarding the presence of chronic health conditions (e.g., asthma, ADD [attention deficit disorder]/ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder]) is obtained from parents at student enrollment using a student health form (Wright et al, 2013).…”

“…In East Baton Rouge, some SBHC data are linked with academic outcomes. The “Department of Public Health’s mandate for documentation of psychosocial treatment plans for students showing poor academic performance” spurred an examination of academic outcomes for students “who received mental health therapy” (Wright et al, 2013, pp. 14-15).…”

“…In this case, the data are manually linked without the use of a system like PowerSchool®. Data analyses showed that the grades of 30% of students “who receive mental health therapy improve by the end of the school year” (Wright et al, 2013, p. 17). The community attributes these improvements to their “ongoing work to standardize clinical protocols in mental health care” (Wright et al, 2013, p. 17) and hopes to refine and expand the system to link other types of health data to academic data in the future.…”

“…Data analyses showed that the grades of 30% of students “who receive mental health therapy improve by the end of the school year” (Wright et al, 2013, p. 17). The community attributes these improvements to their “ongoing work to standardize clinical protocols in mental health care” (Wright et al, 2013, p. 17) and hopes to refine and expand the system to link other types of health data to academic data in the future. One of the challenges noted in the East Baton Rouge description was that schools do not necessarily collect attendance data in the same way, and thus, this variable needed to be transformed in a standardized way before conducting analyses.…”