School-Based Health Care: Advancing Educational Success and Public Health - Paperback

While there are numerous books and articles that concern themselves with dimensions of health and school-aged children and youth, this will be the first volume addressing practice, policy, and applied research on outcomes and impacts particular to school-based health care. This edited book, the first of its kind in over 20 years, attempts to address that need by capturing the current knowledge on school-based health care from the field of practitioners, researchers and policy advocates. Their voices demonstrate the wide array of those committed to advancing the school-based health care movement. Collectively they share their experiences and wisdom on strategies that not only improve access to comprehensive health care, services, and programs but favorably impact health and educational equity as well. In addition, insight is provided into the components of a national policy initiative designed to secure favorable local, state and national policies. Contributors to this book reflect the levels of engagement needed to advance the health and wellness of America's children and youth through the school-based health care movement. Educational attainment is widely acknowledged as the most reliable means of decimating the impact of poverty. Health fuels the resilience of otherwise at-risk children and youth enabling them to actualize their innate potential. With hindsight and research as our evidence, school-based health centers now more than ever are positioned to take their rightful place in the health and educational reform movements on behalf of the populations they most often care for, economically disadvantaged youth.