Supporting Student Health and Wellness During Public Health Emergencies

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Powering Up Preparedness: Partnering to Support Student Health and Wellness During Public Health Emergencies Summit

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the importance of school emergency preparedness to the forefront. On April 17-18, 2024, representatives from local, state, and tribal health and education agencies, along with national and federal health and education partners, met at the American Academy of Pediatrics for the Powering Up Preparedness: Partnering to Support Student Health and Wellness During Public Health Emergencies summit. The meeting provided an opportunity to capture insights from the COVID-19 pandemic and identify strategies for building school preparedness and response capabilities for future Public Health Emergencies (PHEs). Read on to learn more about the summit and its outcomes.

The summit focused on documenting successful approaches and partnerships that participants implemented to protect the health and wellness of students during the COVID-19 PHE; identifying and prioritizing strategies and solutions that state health and education agencies can implement to improve PHE preparedness and response in schools; and generating considerations that state and tribal health and education agencies can use to strengthen PHE planning.

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Summit Objectives

Objective 1: Document impactful and innovative approaches that local, state, and tribal health and education agencies and national partners took to help schools protect the health and wellness of students during the COVID-19 PHE, including strategies to support students in disproportionately affected communities.

Objective 2: Document new and unique partnerships that local, state, and tribal health and education agencies and national partners formed to help schools protect the health and wellness of students during the COVID-19 PHE .

Objective 3: Identify key challenges local, state, and tribal health and education agencies and national partners encountered in their efforts to help schools protect the health and wellness of students during the COVID-19 PHE.

Objective 4: Develop strategies and solutions that state and tribal health and education agencies can implement to address those challenges in order to improve preparedness for, and response to, future PHEs.

Objective 5: Identify planning considerations that state and tribal health and education agencies can use to improve their response to future PHEs

Summary of Summit Outcomes

Impactful and Innovative Approaches

Participants employed a myriad of effective approaches to supporting students and schools during the COVID-19 PHE. Drivers of success included:

Providing opportunities for peer connections
Leveraging partnerships and collaboration
Designing programs and guidance around community, school, and student needs
Ensuring accessibility of programs and information
Communicating effectively

New and Unique Partnerships

Strategies and Solutions

Participants identified priority strategies to improve school preparedness and response across multiple topic areas:

Student mental health
- Grow and diversify the school mental health workforce
- Use data to improve policies and practices
Staff mental health
- Develop an educational model that reflects staff needs and priorities
- Use data to create policies to support staff wellbeing
Public trust and support for evidence-based interventions
- Agree on source of information to inform shared guidance from all partners
- Hire diverse and representative leaders in public health and education
Communications
- Engage trusted community partners to champion communications during PHEs
- Establish procedures to enhance information-sharing among federal, state, tribal, and local agencies
State/tribal partnerships and collaboration
- Develop clear, defined job descriptions for state/tribal agency staff
- Implement a communication plan that facilitates timely, coordinated information dissemination
Local partnerships and collaboration
- Streamline requirements and allow for local flexibility in using funds
- Establish a mechanism to improve communication between state/tribal and local entities
Public health emergency planning
- Convene state/tribal-level committee to develop an emergency operations plan
- Identify strategies to consistently resource schools

Planning Considerations

Participants generated a list of planning considerations that states can adapt and use to build preparedness for future PHEs, with a focus on several core areas:

Assessment: Learning about existing infrastructure, resources, data, partners, processes, etc. and identifying needs and gaps
Improvement and expansion: Making improvements to and scaling up existing plans, partnerships, programs, and structures
Collaboration and engagement: Working to understand and engage decision-makers, partners, community members, youth, and families
Training: Enhancing the capacity of state and local health and education staff to improve PHE preparedness and response
Practice: Conducting exercises to practice and test emergency plans and procedures

Identifying Challenges and Developing Strategies and Solutions

Identifying Planning Considerations

Next Steps: Advancing Summit Findings

Presentation Snapshots

Get In Touch

If you have questions regarding supporting student health and wellness during public health emergencies, please contact us.

This project was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number NU38OT000282, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The contents of this report are solely the responsibility of the American Academy of Pediatrics and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the Department of Health and Human Services or of any agencies or organizations of individuals who participated in the summit.

Last Updated

09/16/2024

Source

American Academy of Pediatrics

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