Placing students at the center: the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model.

BACKGROUND: Students are the heart of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. Students are the recipients of programs and services to ensure that they are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged and also serve as partners in the implementation and dissemination of the WSCC model. METHODS: A review of the number of students nationwide enjoying the 5 Whole Child tenets reveals severe deficiencies while a review of student-centered approaches, including student engagement and student voice, appears to be one way to remedy these deficiencies. RESULTS: Research in both education and health reveals that giving students a voice and engaging students as partners benefits them by fostering development of skills, improvement in competence, and exertion of control over their lives while simultaneously improving outcomes for their peers and the entire school/organization. CONCLUSIONS: Creating meaningful roles for students as allies, decision makers, planners, and consumers shows a commitment to prepare them for the challenges of today and the possibilities of tomorrow.

What have we learned from collaborative partnerships to concomitantly improve both education and health?

BACKGROUND: Collaborative partnerships are an essential means to concomitantly improve both education outcomes and health outcomes among K-12 students. METHODS: We describe examples of contemporaneous, interactive, and evolving partnerships that have been implemented, respectively, by a national governmental health organization, national nongovernmental education and health organizations, a state governmental education organization, and a local nongovernmental health organization that serves partner schools. RESULTS: Each of these partnerships strategically built operational infrastructures that enabled partners to efficiently combine their resources to improve student education and health. CONCLUSIONS: To implement a Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Framework, we need to purposefully strengthen, expand, and interconnect national, state, and local collaborative partnerships and supporting infrastructures that concomitantly can improve both education and health.

Addressing the social determinants of health of children and youth: a role for SOPHE members.

The determinants of youth health disparities include poverty, unequal access to health care, poor environmental conditions, and educational inequities. Poor and minority children have more health problems and less access to health care than their higher socioeconomic status cohorts. Having more health problems leads to more absenteeism in school, which, in turn, can affect achievement. The educational level that one attains is a significant determinant of one's earning potential and health. Those who learn more earn more money and have a better health status. Those who do not attain a high school diploma on average live 6 to 9 years less than those who do graduate from high school. Furthermore, their children also experience poorer health and the cycle is repeated. Achieving a high school diploma and a college degree is an acknowledged route out of poverty. However, that route is blocked for many poor and minority students. SOPHE is in a prime position to be the organization linking the health care, public health and education sectors in addressing the reduction of both health disparities and educational inequities. This article describes what SOPHE members can do both individually and collectively to reduce the health and educational inequities facing our most vulnerable children.