Data is powerful: Harness that power to improve students’ health
When school nurses aim to create healthy environments for students and faculty, data is necessary to make changes to school policies and the school environment. However, the health and chronic conditions of the children who attend school each day is not collected in any national government or non-profit data sets (Bergren et al., 2016). The Department of Education collects limited health data on students who have Individualized Education Plans and for students who qualify for special education. Health information is collected in billing records for children who are hospitalized or who see primary and specialty care providers. However, there is no national database of the health care provided to the vast majority of children from prekindergarten through 12th grade who attend school every day in the United States (Selekman, Wolfe, & Cole, 2015).
Standardization of the data collected and reported is essential to aggregate data across states, across delivery models and staffing variations (Johnson, Bergren, & Westbrook, 2012). Standardization means that each school health provider collects and stores data about the care they provide using identical terms and definitions. That allows data to be combined, or aggregated at the school, district, state and national level. When data is aggregated, only then can comparisons be made about the relative effectiveness of nurse-student ratios, nurse-school building ratios, geographic barriers, and delivery models. Since 1998, on and off, NASN has created taskforces to address this gap in data.
Step Up & Be Counted! was a 3-year data initiative (2014-2016) that was a joint venture between NASN and the National Association of State School Nurse consultants. The National Uniform School Nurse Data Set was created with 15 data elements, and data was collected from 39 states, some with 1 school district reporting and other states with 100% of the schools reporting data into a national data portal.
The Joint Partnership between NASN and NASSNC came to an end in 2016. Since then NASN has launched a new initiative called "National School Health Data Set: Every Student Counts!". The purpose of this initiative is to continue to collect standardized data nationally, while also putting more emphasis on building school nurses' ability and understanding of data collection and use (Maughan, Johnson & Bergren, 2018).
Recognizing the value and importance of school health data, the CDC awarded NASN a $1.3 million dollar contract to improve data collection among school nurses (NASN, 2018).
To dispel the stereotypes about school nursing and school health, it is imperative that school nurses collect and report the data about the students they serve and about the amount of health care that is delivered in school each and every day.
References
Bergren, M.D., Maughan, E.D., Wolfe, L.C., Patrick, K., Watts, H.E.S. Pontius, D., Johnson, K.H., Cole, M. Gerdes, J., & Mendonca, L.L. (2016). What’s up with “Step Up”? Step Up and Be Counted! The National Uniform School Nurse Data Set. NASN School Nurse, 31, 29-32. doi: 10.1177/1942602X15619936. (Click to see infographic of Step Up & Be Counted! data).
Johnson, K. H., Bergren, M.D. & Westbrook, L.O. (2012). The promise of standardized data collection: School health variables Identified by states. Journal of School Nursing, 28. 95-107. doi: 10.1177/1059840511426434
Maughan, E.D., Johnson, K.H., & Bergren, M.D. (2018). Introducing NASN’s new data initiative: Every Student Counts! Make this your year of data. NASN School Nurse, 33, 291-294. doi: 10.1177/1942602X18791572
National Association of School Nurses. (2018, September 24). CDC awards NASN 1.3 million contract [Press release]. Retrieved from https://schoolnursenet.nasn.org/blogs/nasn-profile/2018/09/24/cdc-awards-nasn-13-million-contract
Selekman, J., Wolfe, L. C., & Cole, M. (2015). What data do states collect related to school nurses, school health and health care provided? Journal of School Nursing, 32, 209-220. doi:10.1177/1059840515606786