Enhancing School Health Services

Enhancing School Health Services helps prevent health problems and injuries and ensures appropriate care for students. Essential functions of school health services include urgent and emergency care, health promotion and risk prevention, assistance with medication, and referral and other related services. These screening, diagnostic, treatment, and health counseling services respond to medical emergencies, identify and address health problems, protect students through immunizations, and allow students with special needs to participate in classes. They require record maintenance and management to ensure proper documentation and follow-up care. The collaboration of health, education, and social services for students within the school will decrease the behavioral and health problems of students, therefore improving school attendance and increasing their ability to learn.

"The extent of physical, emotional, psychological, and social problems present in some student populations is so great that the primary mission of the school- education- cannot proceed if these pathologies are not addressed" (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989). Schools are the ideal location to address health and human services needs and preventive services, as well as health and social services to fill in the gaps in the health care system in communities where community-based health services are limited or unavailable to many students. With the help of the school health services, students learn more about assessing health-risk behaviors, prevention strategies, accessing community health resources, and identifying healthy lifestyles.

Moreover, preventive health services provided through schools, coupled with health education and counseling that promote healthy lifestyles and self-sufficiency, can help contain health care costs (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991). "School health services must respond to the identified needs of children in the community, and they must do so in an organized approach that builds on carefully developed ties to community-based services as well as fully integrated partnerships among those who provide care within the school setting. Only in that way can school-based health services play an effective role in the future of child health care in the United States (Lear, 1996).

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