Credit: Andy Kreiss/ The L.A. Trust

Family Nurse Practitioner Glenda Leflore examines Fremont Loftier Schoolhouse student Brianna Star Hernandez at the Fremont High School Wellness Center.

School-based health centers in California volition accept the pb in educating school staff and families nationwide almost asthma attacks triggered by grit, mold, smoke and chemical cleaning products, co-ordinate to a new federal grant announced earlier this calendar month.

The grant will help schoolhouse-based health center nurses, doctors and aides develop expertise in monitoring indoor air quality, in improver to the part they already play in helping students and parents manage asthma treatments at schoolhouse.

The U.South. Environmental Protection Agency awarded a $600,000 grant to the Oakland-based Public Health Institute to help school health centers fight environmental asthma triggers. In a partnership, the Public Health Institute's Regional Asthma Direction and Prevention program will bring its expertise nearly the impact of grit, mold and other environmental detritus, while the California Schoolhouse-Based Wellness Alliance will work with school wellness centers, in the state and across the country, on how all-time to convey the information to students, parents and school staff.

"It'south a slap-up opportunity for school-based health centers to do something that is going to be a benefit to schools,"said Kristin Andersen, associate manager of the California School-Based Health Alliance, an Oakland-based association of schoolhouse wellness centers. "Considering of their location on campus and their relationships with schools, schoolhouse-based health centers can assist schools identify where problems are."

The land has 230 school-based health centers that operate on or nigh campuses and provide a range of services, from counseling to physicals to birth control, in partnership with community health clinics.

"It's a peachy opportunity for school-based health centers to exercise something that is going to be a benefit to schools," said Kristin Andersen, associate director of the California School-Based Wellness Brotherhood.

Asthma, a chronic respiratory disease, affects more than 900,000 children in California, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The illness is besides a leading crusade of absenteeism – an event of increasing importance non but for the sake of educatee health. Schools receive funding based on Average Daily Omnipresence, and absenteeism affects academic progress and school culture. Improving attendance is a goal under the new school finance Local Control and Accountability Plans developed by districts.

In Jan, the California School-Based Health Alliance will invite school health centers in the state to utilize to a half-dozen-school pilot program to gain expertise about indoor air quality and try out communication strategies.

Under the grant, the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention programme and the California School-Based Health Brotherhood volition:

  • Develop an Asthma Environmental Intervention Guide for school-based health centers nationwide that explains how to forestall and manage environmental asthma triggers at school and at dwelling house;
  • Conduct trainings at land conferences of school-based wellness centers in California, Michigan, New York, and Connecticut – all states with high asthma prevalence;
  • Convene a national learning collaborative amidst schoolhouse-based health centers in California and nationwide.

"Children spend a significant amount of time at school, making schools a very of import place to address asthma," said Anne Kelsey Lamb, director of the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention plan, in a statement. The goal, she said, is to "improve indoor air quality and reduce the burden of asthma."

"School-based health centers are already working in wellness educational activity and asthma management," Andersen said. "This is going to allow them to expand into a new surface area."

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