Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Jessica P. Bergstrom, MPH¹, Susan Partington, PhD¹, Loren W. Galvao, MD, MPH², M. Kathleen Murphy, RN, MSN, APRN-BC³, Elizabeth Fayram, PhD⁴, and Ron A. Cisler, PhD². (1) Center for Urban Population Health, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, 1020 N. 12th Street, Suite 4180, Milwaukee, WI 53233, 414-219-5067, jbergstrom@wisc.edu, (2) Center for Urban Population Health, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1020 N. 12th Street, Suite 4180, Milwaukee, WI 53233, (3) Milwaukee Public Schools, 5225 W. Vliet, Rm. 272, Milwaukee, WI 53208, (4) Institute for Urban Health Partnerships, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1921 E. Hartford, Milwaukee, WI 53211

Although public health research focusing on the health of school-age children is consistently encouraged by recent federal, state and local health initiatives, partnering with schools can be challenging. In recent years, a much needed emphasis has been placed on protecting health information and as a result the number of school districts and institutional review boards requiring an active parental consent process has grown. The Health Information Improvement Project is a multi-year, multi-school project in Milwaukee, WI, designed to improve the quality and quantity of health information collected from elementary students in order to be able to plan focused interventions aimed at improving student health. Information to be collected from first and fourth graders in eight participating schools includes: a self-reported child health questionnaire, results of a health screening, height, weight, blood pressure and a child health screening instrument to be completed by the parent. The research review board of the district required an active parental consent process (in Spanish and English) for all potential student participants (n=1184). We discuss our experiences working with a large, urban school district, the methods used to garner active consent and the implications of the reduced response rate (56%) on the implementation, results and generalizability of the project. We present analyses of response rate by number of visits to the school, classroom and school demographic characteristics. We also make recommendations for school-based research projects to achieve improved active consent response rates.

Learning Objectives: