This author is presenting a session at Virtual NASN2021 titled Call to Action: School Nurses Supporting Healthy Students and a Healthy Planet.
School nurses work to ensure clean, safe places for our students to live, learn, work, and play and the vision of the National Association of School Nurses, “All students will be healthy, safe, and ready to learn”, is a call to action.
Our students face unprecedented risks to their health and well-being related to the health of the planet and it’s ability to provide life sustaining resources such as clean air and water, food, and safe places to live. These risks unequally impact under-resourced communities, students of color, and students with chronic health conditions, further deepening existing health, educational, and social disparities. The Framework for 21st Century School Nurse practice provides a mindset to take actions to improve student health at the individual, personal, and student level, and to move upstream to address the social determinants of health, “the conditions in the environments in which people live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risk”. These conditions of our environment and our access to them are directly impacted by the stability of our climate and the health of the planet. It is therefore reasonable to say that a stable climate is the most fundamental determinant of health.
The health of all students and the pursuit of equity necessitates that school nurses incorporate strategies to address the climate and planetary health crisis. Our presentation will provide strategies to build partnerships and tools for school nurses that are simple, appropriate, evidence-based, and effective. We are excited to share these impactful tools and strategies to help students build resiliency, support school nurses to advocate for sustainable solutions at the school and community level, and take meaningful personal actions.
Planetary health simply means human health and the state of the natural systems on which it depends, but it can be a charged issue. We hope that by coming together with an open mind, we can create space for learning and new understandings.