New York: Building School Health Systems through Coordinating School Health

The Statewide CSHP chooses to identify two program accomplishments at this time;

Big-5 Coordinated School Health / Health Education Grant and the “Building School Health Systems” initiative.  The Big-5 CSH / Health Education Grant targets schools with populations at high risk for health disparity, providing opportunities that are directly aligned to school level impact measures and program outcomes. The “Building School

Health Systems” initiative is designed to provide deep and sustainable school health change and positive health and academic outcomes.

Big-5 Coordinated School Health / Health Education Grant:

In order to reach populations with the greatest risk for health disparities in HIV,obesity, poor nutrition, and tobacco use, the Statewide CSHP was able to promote the Big-5 Coordinated School Health / Health Education grant opportunity. This grant opportunity utilized CDC funds to target the five largest urban, high-needs school districts in New York State. School districts were given the opportunity to choose from a variety of funded options that were directly aligned to NYSED’s selected school level impact measures (SLIMS). For example, building on existing partnerships and infrastructure at the New York City Department of Education, this grant opportunity is enabling:

• Promotion of the new NYCDOE Wellness Policy city-wide;
• Implementation of HIV and pregnancy prevention programs to culturally diverse students;
• Training to improve comprehensive health education and services in high disparity areas;
• Training for NYC DOE staff in creating and managing online professional development courses;

This effort is a significant step toward meeting program outcomes because New York City alone contains over one-half of the student population of New York State has culturally diverse and underserved populations, and has shown disproportionate risk for obesity, diabetes, and vulnerability to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. This grant program demonstrates important partnerships with the CDC/DASH funded NYC DOE and other relevant stakeholders.

Building School Health Systems (Initiation of Systems-change initiative):

Purposeful collaboration with the American School Health Association, local education agencies (LEAs) and institutions of higher education (IHEs) in New York State has resulted in the development of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with an IHE to engage 3 LEAs in a long-term (4-5 year) systems-change initiative designed to improve district-level coordination of school health. Through creating and supporting functionally coordinated school health systems within school districts that are integrated with the primary missions and operations of schools, both health and academic aims will be met. (This is the main theory of action of this initiative). In-depth efforts with the three targeted districts over the course of 4-5 years will present evaluation evidence of the impact of school health systems on health and academic achievement. Additionally, short-term and intermediate outcomes of this initiative will provide ‘”lessons learned” that can be converted into statewide guidance for:

• Building school health systems;
• Delivering specialized technical assistance to build school health systems;
• Building partnerships between IHEs and LEAs to improve school health systems.

Contact Persons

• Owen Donovan, Martha Morrissey NYSED #518-486-6090
• Email Addresses: donovan@mail.nysed.gov and morriss@mail.nysed.gov
• Website Address: http://www.nysed.gov/