Guest Author - D. Lynn Byrne, Ph.D.
An interesting missive came home in today’s backpack. It was a copy of our school’s policy for flu management. Timely, certainly, given the rise in the number of cases of out-of-season flu and flu-like viruses.
Efforts to manage the outbreak of viral illnesses in settings with large numbers of children are bringing about a new kind of school reform-public health controls. Public health, once the purview of local, county, state and federal governments, is now a priority issue for school administration.
What does public health management look like at the school level? District and school administrators are creating emergency plans and procedures for managing school activities if/when a school has a viral outbreak. They’re creating the means to insure parents and students are notified about health issues; and provided with information on containing or controlling illness. They’re enforcing new rules for facilities management; specifically rules related to cleaning and waste disposal. They’re drawing up transportation plans to manage the process of shifting students from campus to home in a rapid and safe manner. They’re establishing new avenues for providing education to school-children during the event of a school closure. Finally, they’re thinking of ways of evaluating and measuring the success (or failure) of a policy; and improving their actions for the next round of illness.
Is this really reform? Well, yes and no. It’s not that we’re asking schools to do something new or totally foreign. But, it is a reform in the sense that we’re expecting the schools to take a much larger role in managing public health. Once upon a time, it was enough to provide a school nurse, a few personal health handouts, and maybe a back-to-school shot clinic or accident insurance programs. Then we expected schools to do simple screenings (vision, hearing, scoliosis). In recent years many schools have added travelling clinics (ours offers access to a mobile dentist) and referral specialists (for those who may not know how to access low-cost or government sponsored services). Today’s schools are at the heart of many communities; and have taken their new role very seriously. This change in status combined with the need to protect children (and the need to protect the greater community from the many viruses that children tend to spread so easily) created a tremendous need for schools to take on this new role.
Now, if you’re not quite certain what your school is doing to curb the spread of illness or manage it once its begun, you’ll definitely want to find out. You might be surprised at the lengths your school is planning to go to in order to insure your child’s educational processes aren’t disrupted, at least not too badly, during a public health crises.
What are your thoughts about schools and their role in managing in public health? Are you concerned about your school’s approach to crisis management? Do you have an issue you want to address? Stop by the School Reform forum.
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Until next time, happy reading!
