The Role of the Designated State Data Champion

Abstract

Step Up & Be Counted! (Step Up!) is a joint project of the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) and the National Association of State School Nurse Consultants (NASSNC). The goal of the initiative is to develop a National School Nurse Standardized Data Set that will be used by nurses across the country to uniformly collect data the same way. The data will be used to determine the health of children and youth, the care that is delivered in schools, and the impact of school nurses on academic success and well-being. This article focuses on the role of the Designated State Data Champion in the initiative.

What’s Up With Step Up!? Year 2!

“…is to have 100% of students counted and 100% of school nurses represented in the data set. The program was initiated in 2014, with the 1st year of data collected for the 2014-2015 school year (Bergren et al, 2016). In the 2nd year of data collection, 2015-2016, more states contributed data, and many states reported on a larger number of school nurses reporting data.…”

“…School nurses then report their data to their school district representative, who aggregates the data and removes all references to the individual student or school and then reports the aggregated, de-identified data to a data champion at the state level. The designated state data champion is typically the state school nurse consultant or, if there is no consultant, a representative of the local school nurse professional organization or a designated volunteer who serves as the designated state data champion (Wolfe et al, 2016). The designated state data champion then submits the state's report to the national database, where data from all the states are aggregated.…”

Step Up & Be Counted! Strategies for Data Collection

“…Step Up! provides the standardization needed to promote an "apples to apples" analysis of resources, interventions, and outcomes (Bergren et al, 2016). While many organizations collect data on child health-a huge investment of resources-using the data already collected by school nurses in their documentation will provide similar information at a scope and breadth beyond traditional survey research methods at a cost many times less (Maughan et al, 2014).…”

“…are the Steppers-the backbone of this project. Local nurses aggregate and de-identify their health office data and then submit it to the Designated State Data Champion (Wolfe et al, 2016). Designated State Data Champions from each state volunteer their time to collect, aggregate, and de-identify the data from their state; assure that it is clean and accurate; and then submit it to the national site (see Figure 1).…”

Creating a Culture of Accurate and Precise Data

“…Step Up & Be Counted!, want to provide answers on the intensity of school health services and the prevalence of student health needs in order to advocate for increased investment in child health (Bergren et al, 2016;Maughan et al, 2014;Selekman, Wolfe, & Cole, 2016;Wolfe et al, 2016). Everyone has a stake in the quality and…”