Schools are an ideal setting to address social determinants of health, teach healthy behaviors, and provide students with opportunities to improve dietary and physical activity behaviors and manage chronic health conditions. In addition, promoting the health and emotional well-being of school employees ultimately supports students’ health and academic success. Texas enrolled 5,427,370 public school students in over 1,200 independent school districts (ISDs) during the 2021-2022 school year and Texas law requires the establishment of a local school health advisory committee at each school district. In 2021, an estimated 6.4% of Texas students were diagnosed with asthma and 20.3% of Texas youth ages 10 to 17 had obesity during the 2019-2020 school year. A survey administered to US households in 2015-2016 showed that around 8% of children are affected by food allergy. The Texas 2020 School Health Profiles data indicated that 37.2% of school principals who completed the survey stated that their schools had ever used a self-assessment tool to assess school policies, activities, and programs regarding chronic health conditions. Over 50% of surveyed lead health education teachers said they would like to receive professional development on asthma (53.9%), chronic disease prevention (65.3%), and food allergies (52.8%).
As part of its mission to address the current and future burden of chronic disease in Texas, the DSHS School Health (SH) Program will provide expanded support to local education agencies (LEA) and ISDs to reduce the burden of childhood chronic disease and increase health behaviors both statewide and at the priority LEA. The SH Program intends to accomplish this through professional development and technical assistance support to address Whole School, Whole Child, Whole Community (WSCC) model components, establishment of a statewide school health partnership, expanding access to unassigned medications, and funding School Health Index action plans in priority ISDs. The SH Program defines a local education agency as an Education Service Center. The SH Program has selected ESC Region 1, along the Rio Grande border in south Texas, as the priority LEA due to its high Social Vulnerability Index score.
The SH Program has chosen the following strategies to protect and improve the health and well-being of Texas students: implement professional development (PD) and technical assistance (TA) on school health topics from the WSCC model and assessment tools statewide and in one priority LEA; assess PD and TA needs statewide; provide follow-up support after PD and TA events; support SHACs through PD, web and print resources, and TA on conducting assessments and implementing CDC school health tools and policies; create a new state-level school health partnership to bring organizational entities together and consolidate resources for ISDs and SHAC support; establish a process for ISDs to request prescriptions for unassigned medications and provide PD and TA sessions for ISDs on the stock medication laws, regulations, and information on unassigned epinephrine auto-injectors and asthma medication; conduct an environmental scan to identify gaps in school health educational resources, programing, and community support which impact the health and well-being of school communities; provide direct support for the School Health Index (SHI) assessment of school health policies, practices, programs, and services and the development of school health action plans in priority ISDs; fund the implementation of priority ISDs SHI action plans; and disseminate accomplishments and lessons learned through success stories, implementation guidance and knowledge transfer workshops.
