School Nurse Leadership Program

Perhaps more than anyone, school nurses understand how the school environment shapes children’s health, and how children’s health shapes their ability to succeed at school.

The air children breathe, the food they eat, and the opportunities they have to be physically active affect their health and learning for a lifetime. Children spend most of their waking hours outside of home in school, where poor indoor air quality, unhealthy food choices and declining opportunities for physical activity are contributing to epidemics of childhood obesity and asthma.

While the reasons for these dramatic increases in asthma and obesity are multi-faceted and complex, it is clear that schools are key places in which to promote the healthy environments, healthy food, and active lifestyles that can reverse these trends and provide a context for student achievement and wellbeing.

School Nurse Leadership Training participants, Spring 2007

To bring about the changes in policy and practice that will create healthy school environments, HSC engages school nurses to develop and implement wellness and environmental health practices at the school and district levels and to advocate for state-level policy changes that will make a difference for great numbers of children.

A key part of this engagement is our School Nurse Leadership Training program.

Interested in getting involved in HSC’s school nurse leadership programs? Please e-mail Donna Fishman or call (312) 419-1810, and your name will be added to our contact list. We are planning more school nurse programs, and will contact you as details of these programs are available.