School Based Health Programs

All of us know that children learn better when they are well. Often, it is the teacher or school nurse that first notices a potential health problem in their students. Fortunately for many students, teachers and parents, there's a school-based health program staffed by nurses and health aides to address the problem immediately and arrange for or coordinate care that might prevent the problem from recurring.

By making school health programs an integral part of a community's health system, the schools can become virtual extensions of the primary care system, but with the added value of accessibility and convenience.

School-based health programs provide primary and preventive health care services to students while reducing lost school time, removing barriers to care and promoting family involvement. The programs:

Help keep children out of higher cost health care options (i.e. hospitalization and emergency room visits).
Detect illness to prevent expensive emergency interventions.
Educate students to become good consumers of health care utilizing the least expensive form of intervention appropriate to the situation.
Reduce parental work leave time by enabling parents to use leave time only when the child's healthcare need extends beyond the capability of the school nurse.
Track population health trends to enable early interventions and prevent costly downstream responses.

On the left you'll find links to information about the Children's Hospital of Austin / Austin Independent School District partnership, web sites with additional information and statistics.

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