State of the Data Summary: National School Health Data Set: Every Student Counts! 2023-2024 School Year.

The National School Health Data Set: Every Student Counts! (ESC!) is NASN's data initiative focusing on building data capacity for school nurses, a uniform data set with standardized definitions, and promoting data infrastructure including school nurse access to electronic documentation, interoperability of educational systems and school health records, and build partnerships to increase data collection, storage, retrievable, and utilization. Each year since 2018, states have submitted data to NASN for inclusion in the National School Health Data Set. Participation is built on a tiered programing model to include school nurses at the school, state, and national level. Every state has identified a State Data Coordinator (SDC) who serves as a liaison to NASN to support ESC! but also provides support to school nurses in their state. This article provides an overview of the ESC! data initiative for the 2023-2024 school year, which includes the data from the 2022-2023 school year.

The History of US Menstrual Health, School Nurses, and the Future of Menstrual Health Equity.

In the United States, adolescents suffer from inadequate menstrual health, meaning that adolescents are unprepared for menarche, lack the practical resources they need to comfortably and confidently manage menstruation, and receive inadequate health education and care for menstrual pain and disorders. In this article, we provide a historical analysis of the role of school nurses in addressing menstruation from the early 20th century up to the present day. We contextualize the current realities of school nursing and menstrual health education and clinical support. We argue that the decentralized US school system, a cultural aversion to open discussion about menstruation, and the outsized influence of commercial menstrual product manufacturers have hampered the ability of school nurses to deliver menstrual health education along with menstrual health support. Finally, we discuss implications for today's schooling experiences as well as recommendations for how to support school nurses in aligning our national approach to menstrual health toward the public health perspective of menstrual equity. (Am J Public Health. 2024;114(9):903-908. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2024.307705).

Advocacy in Action: NASN's 2024 Advocacy and Legislative Priorities.

All nurses have a responsibility to advocate. Advocacy is the eighth school nurse standard and can be actualized in many ways. NASN has established advocacy priorities to provide members with strategic advocacy objectives to advance their school nursing practice. One aspect of these priorities is legislative advocacy. The NASN board of directors puts legislative advocacy into action when they visit their Congress members on Capitol Hill. This article describes NASN's advocacy priorities and how school nurse visits to "the Hill" introduces legislative priorities to legislators.

Legal Issues 101: Implications of Attendance, Absenteeism, and Truancy in the School Setting.

This article is part of Legal Issues 101, a series of topics addressing some common questions and misconceptions about the law and school health. School nurse job responsibilities differ regarding monitoring student attendance and assisting school administrators with required truancy reporting. However, all school nurses support student attendance with a focus on students being safe, healthy, and ready to learn. In this article, the authors address frequently asked questions on topics surrounding student attendance including excused and unexcused absences, truancy, parent/guardian engagement, and related laws.

Practicing With a Framework Mindset: A Closer Look at the Standards of Practice Principle.

School nurses are more likely to support students' health, safety, and readiness to learn if they approach their practice through the lens of the School Nursing Practice Framework™ (the Framework). Practicing with an intentional focus on the Framework principles is called practicing with a Framework mindset. This article is the first in a 5-part series discussing how to be a school nurse who practices with a Framework mindset. In this article, school nurses will discover the basis for updates to the Framework's Standards of Practice principle, differences between the Standards of Practice principle and the authoritative standards of school nursing practice, activities that exemplify the Standards of Practice principle, and how to address a real-world school nursing challenge with a Framework mindset attuned to the Standards of Practice principle.

Reading the signs in health visits-Perspectives of adolescents with migration experiences on encounters with school nurses.

AIM: To explore the experiences of health visits within the school health services from the perspective of adolescents with migration experiences. DESIGN: A descriptive qualitative study. METHODS: Data were collected using focus groups and semi-structured individual interviews with adolescents with migration experiences aged 13-17 years old. Analysis was conducted using reflexive thematic analysis. RESULTS: The results described adolescents reading the signs in the guided interaction between them and the school nurses. Reading the signs illustrated the adolescents' continuous interpretation of the interaction with the school nurse, and their decisions on how to respond throughout the health visit. These interpretations influenced the adolescents' shifting willingness to talk about their health and how they adapted to the space of participation provided by the school nurse. The interpretation also influenced their experiences of health visits as focusing on their health without making them feel singled out. CONCLUSION: Although individual considerations might be warranted in health visits with adolescents with migration experiences, the results indicate that similarities in intrapersonal communication in various encounters between adolescents and health professionals might be greater than any differences. Healthcare encounters with adolescents with migration experiences might thus need to be conducted with an awareness that adolescents read the signs in the guided interaction and that similarities in this interaction are greater than any differences.

Asthma policy in Illinois: A survey of school nursing and staff knowledge and implementation patterns.

OBJECTIVE: Our goal is to examine gaps in self-carry, asthma emergency protocol, and stock inhaler policy knowledge in Illinois schools. DESIGN: A 30-item REDCap cross-sectional survey developed by a team of stakeholders was disseminated. Questions assessed policy knowledge, awareness, and practices regarding asthma emergency protocols, self-carry, and stock inhalers. SAMPLE: Participants were Illinois school nurses belonging to a governmental organization listserv. MEASUREMENTS: Analysis utilized Chi-square tests, descriptive statistics, and t-tests. RESULTS: Nurses reported 36% of students on average self-carried asthma medication. Thirty percent of nurses were not aware of their emergency asthma policy and only 60% reported having an emergency asthma protocol in their school(s). Fifty-four percent of nurses were aware of stock inhaler programming. Of the 10.3% who reported a stock inhaler program, a lower frequency reported calling 911 for asthma emergencies. Perceived school asthma prevalence varied from 0%-87%. CONCLUSIONS: Our survey demonstrates large variation in knowledge and implementation of school-based asthma health policy. This is likely due to variations in health policy education dissemination. Future efforts should focus on the dissemination and implementation of school-based asthma health policies to improve their more universal adoption and better support school-based asthma management.

School nurses and menstrual communication: Destigmatizing the stigma among adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to understand how school nurses, often the first line of defense for menstruating adolescents, use communication to assist adolescents in destigmatizing menstruation. DESIGN: I conducted semi-structured narrative interviews with nine nurses employed in a large school district in Northeast Indiana. METHODS: Interviews were coded, categorized, and used a phronetic iterative approach. RESULTS: Analysis determines that nurses assist menstruating students using steps toward accepting menstruation and suggesting ways to avoid menstrual stigmatization. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that school nurses use positive language to assist students in handling their menstruation problems, develop allyships with parents and other teachers, and stress menstrual education. This study highlights the need for more funding for menstrual products and additional school nurses.

Increasing teachers' confidence during health emergencies: A hands-on quality improvement program led by the school nurse.

INTRODUCTION: One in four school-age children has a chronic health condition, with approximately 6% of them having multiple chronic health conditions. These students are at an elevated risk of individual health emergencies during school hours. While teachers receive online training to assist in these emergencies, they lack practicing with rescue medications. METHODS: We developed a Quality Improvement (QI) program that had a) a live presentation; b) a hands-on workshop to practice using rescue medications for allergies, asthma, seizures, and diabetes; c) fliers with first-aid guidelines; and d) a web-based reference toolkit. Teachers' confidence and knowledge were measured using the Learning Self-Efficacy Scale and a knowledge questionnaire with a pre- and post-intervention survey. We also assessed their clinical skills using the rescue medications. RESULTS: 129 teachers took part in this QI program. We collected 95 pre- and 81 post-surveys, with 47 matched. We saw statistically significant increases in confidence, as well as in the individual cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. Teachers also increased their overall knowledge. Collaterally, other district-wide improvements developed. CONCLUSION: This evidence-based, hands-on QI program provided teachers the opportunity to put into practice clinical skills, increasing their confidence to help students when experiencing an individual health emergency. Furthermore, changes beyond the primary goal of this QI program were implemented, highlighting the lead role of the registered nurse as the public health advocate. IMPLICATION TO PRACTICE: Laypeople benefit from hands-on training to learn clinical skills. This program serves as a basis for improving health emergencies preparedness in schools.

Raising Money to Support School Nurses and School Nursing Research: NASN's Endowment Fund.

Have you ever wondered how the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) supports school nursing research and clinical practice degree advancement or how they provide opportunities to strengthen advocacy skills? NASN does this work through an endowment fund which provides annual scholarships and grants to members to support their various professional endeavors.

A Contemporary Framework Update for Today's School Nursing Landscape: Introducing the School Nursing Practice Framework™.

School nursing is a unique nursing specialty that benefits from a practice framework that aids school nurses in explaining and accomplishing their role. In 2016, the NASN debuted its Framework for 21st Century School Nursing Practice™, which has shaped school nursing practice as well as education, leadership, research, and collaboration with stakeholders. However, practice frameworks are not meant to remain the same indefinitely. Therefore, NASN evaluated and updated the Framework to ensure its continued alignment with the education and healthcare landscape. The purpose of this article is to share the history of the Framework for 21st Century School Nursing Practice™ development, provide the rationale for the update, and discuss the strategic process NASN used to update its Framework now entitled the School Nursing Practice Framework™.