Information about the TEAMS Online Course

High-quality school health services – services provided throughout the district by school nurses, physicians and other medical professionals to assess, protect and promote student health – improve student health and support academic success. However, school districts face many challenges in seeking to provide optimal health services to students. The TEAMS program was initiated by the American Academy of Pediatrics with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support school districts in strengthening their school health services. Many school districts from across the country have participated in the program and, using the TEAMS framework and resources, successfully made improvements to their health services.

Target Audience

This course is intended to be completed by a team that includes the school district's lead nurse/health service coordinator, a local health department partner and a physician partner. These three individuals will work together to improve health services in the district. Typically, the school nurse will take the lead on this team.

Depending on your local context, you may choose to work with different partners or include additional people on the team. For example, if your local public health department doesn't have child health programming, you would identify someone else with a similar skillset from your community or involve your state public health department. Module 2 of the course provides guidance on forming a team.

Time Commitment

Resources are tight, including your time. While completing this course does require an investment of time, following the TEAMS framework will ultimately streamline many aspects of your work and allow you to leverage partnerships to improve effectiveness and efficiency.

The readings, videos and quizzes for each module take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to complete. Time spent to complete activities, such as gathering data, meeting with your team, and implementing your action plan, will vary based on your local environment and the issues you choose to tackle.

This course is action-oriented and is intended to guide you through a health services improvement process over the course of months or years. It should be viewed as providing a way to structure your work in a different way, not as something that is seperate from and adds to your existing workload.

Begin TEAMS Course

This webpage was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number NU38OT000282-04-00, funded by the Healthy Schools Branch - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents 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.