Community Schools are a research-based and results-oriented strategy for organizing community resources around student success. School-based health centers are an integral part of many community schools; health professionals across the country have found these schools to be one of the most effective ways to provide preventive health care.
For many underserved children, school-based health centers are their first and only access to health care. This proactive approach prevents health issues from becoming acute concerns in the home, emergency room or community. As a result, youngsters miss fewer school days and parents miss fewer days at work.
In his study, Healthier Students Are Better Learners: A Missing Link in Efforts to Close the Achievement Gap, Charles Basch, Professor of Health Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, argues that ”Despite compelling evidence linking health and academic achievement, there is no U.S. Department of Education initiative to reduce educationally relevant health disparities as part of a national strategy to close the achievement gap.”
Thankfully this statement has the potential to be reversed. President Obama has praised the collaboration between the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services in trying to address this issue. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan publicly agree that collaboration is imperative and that schools are the natural vehicles for aligning resources to get American youth and children ready for productive, healthy and fulfilling lives.
Community schools have an important role to play that both Secretaries recognize: “Making every school a community school — that’s got to be our collective vision,” said Secretary Duncan at a CAS Practicum in 2009; Secretary Sebelius echoed Duncan, at the Coalition for Community Schools conference in April 2010, when she noted that “Community schools are the vehicle for building partnerships between education and health institutions that touch the lives of children and youth. I can’t think of a better way to deliver primary care and preventative care to students and their families than through school-based clinics."
On Tuesday June 28, Adria Cruz, School Health Services Manager at CAS, and I will be introducing the theory and practice of community schools as a strategy for organizing a community’s resources around student success – with a focus on the role of school-based health centers as an essential support.
Please visit: http://www.childrensaidsociety.org and http://nationalcenterforcommunityschools.childrensaidsociety.org/
Jane Quinn
Vice-President for Community Schools and Director National Center for Community Schools
The Children’s Aid Society (CAS)
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