The Healthy Menu Project: Role of the School Nurse: Youth-Adult Shared Partnerships Help Change a School Lunch Menu.

School nurses play an important role in addressing childhood obesity. Although schools who participate in the Federal School Lunch Program follow mandated dietary guidelines, changes to the menu can be made that will have a positive impact on the health of our school community. Students receive nutrition health education, including learning about the importance of choosing whole and unprocessed foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and whole grains and limiting sugars. However, what we are teaching students may not mirror what is actually being served during lunchtime. It is important to listen to students to determine if they are satisfied with what they are being served, as well as to determine if students are actually eating the food being served. Henry Barnard School, an elementary school, in Providence, Rhode Island, embarked on a successful project that took place during the 2017-2018 school year. The goal was to increase overall satisfaction and healthy options of our school lunch menu by creating youth-adult shared partnerships and empowering students throughout the process.

What's Up With "Step Up"? Step Up and Be Counted: The National Uniform School Nurse Data Set.

The health and well-being of children who attend school is not collected in any national data sets. To effectively advocate for the health needs of children where they live, learn, and play, it is essential to build a National Uniform School Nurse Data Set. In 2014, school nurses nationwide were invited to join the Step Up and Be Counted! initiative. To prepare nurses for data collection and reporting, an informational website was established, a marketing campaign was launched, and a data collection tool was developed. Trainings were held at the national conferences of both the National Association of School Nurses and the National Association of State School Nurse Consultants, and locally by state school nurse consultants and champions. The goal of the 2014-2015 academic year was to establish the processes for such a large-scale effort. In Year 1, only three initial data sets were collected from participating school nurses from 37 states. The first year yielded much data, and challenges have been identified and addressed.

National standardized data set for school health-services: step up and be counted!

The National Association of School Nurses and National Association of State School Nurse Consultants Joint Work Group agreed on identified common data points and an initial process for nationwide data collection by school nurses. The emerging process was presented at both the 2014 National Association of School Nurses and the National Association of State School Nurse Consultants annual meetings in San Antonio. The time is now to begin the process for ALL school nurses to collect data to begin building a national school nursing data set. This article is the second of a series and outlines the how, why, and when for collecting identified data indicators. It provides the talking points and collection tool necessary to Step Up and Be Counted!

Standardized data set for school health services: Part 1--getting to big data.

School nurses collect voluminous amounts of data in a variety of ways and use the data to describe trends in students' health and patterns of illness in the student population or to identify ways to improve care. NASN identified years ago that a national school nurse data set was needed to enable data-driven decision making for the millions of children who attend school each day across the United States. Informal work has been done in the past 5 years in preparation for the current joint NASN/ National Association of State School Nurse Consultants workgroup. This article is the first of a two-part series related to the importance of data and national efforts to develop a uniform data set that all school nurses can collect. Collecting data, and collecting it in the same way as other providers, will demonstrate what school nurses do as well as provide the data necessary for robust research on the impact of school nurses on students' health.