A Review of School Based Health Centers and their Role in Health Promotion and Prevention
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- January 30, 2020
- Creator
-
Whitehouse, Erin
- Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Public Health Leadership Program
- Abstract
- School Based Health Centers (SBHCs) are one proposed model to improve the health of children in the United States. However, while there is evidence of their effectiveness in improving individual health outcomes, this paper reviews the current literature on SBHC evaluation and then challenges SBHCs to improve their methodology to measure determinants of health on a broader level using a socio-ecological model. PUBMed, CINAHL, ERIC, and PsycINFO were reviewed for articles related to SBHCs and evaluation. SBHC articles related to student health outcomes and evaluations were then sorted into categories based on their inclusion of determinants or outcomes beyond the individual level of the socio-ecological model. Most of the articles included only individual health measures such as decreased emergency room visits or improved self-reported health status. A few articles included family or community outcomes such as parent knowledge of asthma or teen pregnancy rates, but interventions largely targeted individual determinants of health. Only three articles had any relevance to broader health determinants and none of the articles included a mention of the socio-ecological models or other system models of health. Articles focused on evaluation methodology and other evaluation resources for SBHCs also made few references to including measures of the broader determinants of health in their recommendations. Overall, while SBHCs report health promotion and prevention as a foundation principle, the literature is void of an evaluation of their impact on multiple determinants of health. At the same time, as entities already existing within school and local communities with good community relationships, SBHCs have a unique opportunity to build this literature by expanding their evaluation questions and technique. SBHCs could be an important part of the solution for the fragmented, costly, and ineffective health care system in the United States and a critical bridge between clinical medicine and public health, but they have a burden to demonstrate their ability to do so.
- Date of publication
- August 2011
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Track: HC&P
- Paper type: Systematic review
- Advisor
- Lesneski, Cheryll
- Degree
- Master of Public Health
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Graduation year
- 2011
- Language
- Deposit record
- b6f6bdeb-f0b9-4907-a2ad-769b5d2e1080
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