Steps to Keep Students Safe and Healthy

Presenters: Eva Marx, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hingham, MA; Glenda Wait, Belleville Henderson Central School District, Belleville, NY; Rebecca Partlow, Rock Hill School District 3, Charlotte, SC

This session is presented in separate parts. Use the buttons at the end of the transcription to navigate between each part.

IV. Eva Marx, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

EVA MARX: As we all know, and it's been mentioned several times, what we need is resources to support this, and there is a tool for finding resources that's been developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I want to run through it with you quickly. I have to explain what happened was we communicated by email because we're all from different parts of the country, and so this is in four different parts on our computer, and so we're trying to make this transition. I'll just talk from the handout.

There are many different types of funding, but they really fall into four categories. There's federal categorical funding. There's block grant funding, which is administered by the state. There's state revenue. And then there's private funding resources, such as foundations and corporations and other local resources — businesses, as Glenda mentioned. The Healthy Youth Funding Database, which I'm going to introduce you to, provides ongoing practical information about finding resources. In the old days you could go to the foundation library, and you could find volumes and volumes, and you'd go through them, and by the time they got printed they were probably already out of date. So this is very timely. And it describes government and private sector funding opportunities, and new funding announcements are added every week. So, as I say, it's very timely. And it addresses adolescent health, which means that community health programs are also involved, as well as the eight components of a coordinated school health program. And now I really need to show you what the screen looks like.

You have the URL on your handout, and that's the website that's maintained by the Division and Adolescent and School Health [DASH] of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash]. If you go to that site, you can then click on Funding. And when you do that, you have a choice of the Healthy Youth Funding Database or another one, and you click on the Healthy Youth Funding Database and that brings up a screen where you can type in key words — in this case, Health Education was typed in. Location can be either national or you can choose your state or your territory, so it's specific to your particular state as well. You can look at the entire database or you can look for School Health only. And there's also a pull-down menu so you can, again, look for any component, or if your particular interest is in, say, health services, you can pull down on the menu and look for Health Services. So you click on that, then you get a screen that gives you a list of a number of options. In this one, the person clicked on Planning Grants for Research to Prevent or Reduce Oral Health Disparities. And what that screen will show you, then, is lots of different kinds of information about each particular source. You get the title of the program, who's sponsoring it, how the funds can be used, who's eligible to receive those funds, where it's located, whether it's state or national or urban or whatever. What the application process is, contact information, and frequently there will be links to the particular site so you can get more specific applications from that site and any other information that might be useful.

If we go back to that Funding screen where I said there were two choices, the other choice is the National Conference of State Legislatures' site [http://www.ncsl.org/]. If you click on that, that will take to a site where you can either find out about state revenue or block grants. And again if you click on State Revenue, you can select your state and you can find out about how state revenues are being used to support school health-related activities. You may find that there is quite a bit in your state, or you might find that there isn't. But again by searching this database you might get some ideas also about what you might want to advocate for your state. In this particular case, this is Tennessee, and as you see that had $53 million here for counseling, psychological, and social services. And again you can find out from other states and that gives you some potential for places that you might look for money.

Or you can click on the Block Grants, and this has information for six block grants, actually, and also for Safe and Drug-Free Schools. And you can find your state and click on whatever particular block grant you're interested in, and you can see what kinds of funding are used in your state for school health programs. And here again, this is Kentucky and a Maternal and Child Health Services block grant, and they use their money for school-based services. So again, that's a place to go. It says that there wasn't any available at that point, but other states might have some other ideas.

The other link is to something called Stateserv [http://www.stateserv.hpts.org/], where you can find out about legislation that other states and that your state have that's relevant to school health. On this site, you can click on Adolescent Health and then on State Legislation, and then you have your choice of what year you want to go into, and you can either look by state or by topic. I chose to go to the year 2000 and to go by state because I wanted you to see legislation that Tennessee had back then — [bill number] 674 — which actually creates a coordinated school health program that's supported by that state. And they've appropriated a million dollars to establish coordinated school health programs. And this is model legislation that I like to talk about everywhere I go because I'd love to see other states do this. This is a place that you can go to obtain materials and to find out more information.

I have one more thing that I want to talk about here. I'm going to be talking from your lilac-colored handout now. These are various funding sources. I've given you the DASH site and the National Conference on State Legislatures. There's also a site where you can get information about school grants, and they have sample proposals that can serve as models for you [http://www.schoolgrants.org/]. Then there's the Foundation Center site [http://www.fdncenter.org/] that can show you everything you ever wanted to know about foundations.

There are a couple of tools in there that you might find useful. When I introduced the concept of coordinated school health programs earlier, I talked about the fact that many schools and many communities already are addressing this issue in many, many different ways. This is a tool that you can use to inventory what's already going in your or your community or district, and relate it to the various components. And by doing that, these are the kinds of things that you can find. You can find out where your intersections in your components, and you can find out where your gaps are. So that's a good place to start, if you're thinking about starting something like this.

Another tool is to look at what kinds of resources you might already have, what kind of funding there is. And again you can look at that according to the components — federal sources, state sources, local sources, and other sources. And I have here a sample of what some of those sources might be. In terms of federal sources, some communities and some states have funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, again to support coordinated school health programs. That would be for all of the components. The 21st Century Learning Center, the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] has a lot of funding in there for that — that would cover health education, physical education, nutrition for after-school snacks, counseling, psychological and social services, a healthy school environment, and family and community involvement. So that would be a great partner and a great entrÈe to working with these programs. Again, you can see Title I [of the Elementary Education Act] has support, Title II, Title IV, Safe and Drug-Free Schools as well as 21st Century, and Title VI, which is a new title — it's actually very broad and includes funding for nursing services, for counseling, psychological, and social services, and I don't know exactly how it's going to be implemented, but I'm just thinking from a reading of the legislation that it can be a great support for these activities. You might want to look into that as it is distributed to your states.

Then there's state sources. Many states have state tobacco taxes, and every state that receives tobacco settlement funds — unfortunately, there not being used as widely for school health activities as we might like, or for prevention activities, but again some states do have that. Medicaid reimbursement again is a source of support. Local sources — school districts do have funding. They have funding for your school nurse, maybe for health education. It's something to bring to your school board to see how else you might be able to get support for that work. So again, this is a tool that you can inventory to see what you have available, see where your gaps are, and move on.

Do you have any questions?

[question from audience]

I'm not an expert in this field. This is a question about Medicaid funding. What I have noticed, though, in some of my travels, is that it varies in every state, it's used differently in every state. In some states it seems to be more supportive than in others. What you are experiencing in Illinois may very well be typical only of Illinois.

[question from audience]

Generally, you have to make application. There are things like school lunch programs that come to you automatically because they're entitlement programs. But some of these other programs, yes, you actually do have to apply. Not every state has them, again, but it's something to investigate.

[question from audience]

The question was around whether there's training for school health coordinators. Some states, about 20 states, are funded by the Centers for Disease Control to develop infrastructure to support coordinated school health. Some of them may have those kinds of programs. The American Cancer Society, which was mentioned several times over, has just finished what is actually a five-year institute, but they've just finished three years of training coordinators in 50 states, and they're in the process of encouraging replication institutes that will provide opportunities for training more coordinators. So I would suggest that you ask your American Cancer Society if they know if there's anything happening in your particular area, and also your state department of education health coordinator may be able to help you with that.

[question from audience]

In terms of getting support? Possible funding? I don't know. I think you just have to see what's out there. You're probably better off working through your state because most of the money seems to come to the state and then it's disbursed that way. But again, watch the HY-FUND [Healthy Youth Funding] Database, see what's on there, and see what there is that might help you out.

Thank you all for coming.

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