Schools as a Hub for Health

Description

Schools as a Hub for Health, created by the Athens County Creating Healthy Communities Coalition, was a learning community with multiple partners focusing on physical, mental, and social aspects of health. When local organizations were trying to find the best way to reach the county's population, they decided that schools could be the central location to provide community health programming and address health factors. School hubs targeted not only the students but also teachers, parents, and the larger community.

Project coordinators saw strengths in what the schools were already doing to address community needs, like providing dental sealants and offering healthier concessions options. The hub created a space where schools could learn what other schools were doing, and coalition members could provide resources to help school districts overcome barriers preventing them from replicating other districts' programs.

The Athens County Creating Healthy Communities Coalition is made up of around 20 key community partners and an additional 10-15 associated organizations. The coalition works to make "the healthy choice the easy choice" by creating policy, systems, and environmental changes to increase access to healthy food and opportunities for active living.

The coalition was created by the Athens City-County Health Department through an Ohio Department of Health cardiovascular grant in 2001 and continues to be funded by the state department's Creating Healthy Communities grant.

Services offered

Although the Schools as a Hub learning community is no longer active, many of the programs it facilitated continue and have been institutionalized within Athens County's five school districts. These programs include:

• Athens County Children Services (ACCS) School Outreach Caseworkers
• Dental sealants
• Healthy concessions options added to regular concessions menu
• Integrated mental health services
• Live Healthy Kids (a 22-week exercise and healthy eating program) in all second-grade classrooms
• School gardens
• School-based food pantry
• School-based Community Health Clinics

Results

For this project, the biggest result seen so far is buy-in from the superintendents. Project coordinators say it was a huge accomplishment to have the superintendents sit down in the same room and discuss the strengths of their programs. The superintendents still meet regularly through the Athens-Meigs Educational Service Center, which welcomes community partners to superintendent meetings when they have resources or needs to share.

Challenges

Through discussions with school superintendents and staff, various barriers were identified that kept them from being able to move forward with their health goals and program ideas:

• Finding sufficient funding for projects
• Finding enough time to train staff, coordinate their schedules, and implement the programs
• Getting people to schools so they can help with the programs (transportation issues)
• Recruiting staff to participate in programming, since their schedules are already busy
• Finding enough space for initiatives to take place
• Trying to take on too much at once (mission overreach)

Replication

The project began by surveying local organizations to determine which services were being offered in the schools and which projects were successful. Next, project coordinators brought the results of those surveys to school superintendents and scheduled an individual conference call with each superintendent to discuss the project, review the survey results, and determine each superintendent's level of commitment to the project.

Coordinators also discussed the superintendents' current projects and future goals as well as barriers for health programming in schools. This discussion allowed coordinators to familiarize themselves with schools' improvement plans so they could align their goals with the administrators' goals.

When they met with administrators, coordinators made sure to:

• Set a clear agenda for the meeting
• Value the administrators' time
• Allow superintendents to share their strengths
• Recognize that health may not be the administrators' top priority for their schools
• Help superintendents determine their own goals without being prescriptive

The ultimate goal of this project was for school districts to share with other schools the projects they are working on and the successes they have had in order to help them replicate the programs.

Contact Information

Meredith Erlewine, Creating Healthy Communities Coordinator
Athens City-County Health Department
740.447.5913
merlewine@athenspublichealth.org