Fostering an academic-school district partnership to improve school health information, planning and decision-making

We established a partnership between two academic institutions and a large urban mid-western school district with a predominantly low-income African-American and Latino population to implement the Health Information Improvement Project (HIIP). The main study goals were to improve school health information and provide the District with student health data for health planning and decision-making. The project combined several data collection methods to obtain a comprehensive picture of the health of a sample of diverse, inner-city elementary school students. From a total of 1091 1st and 4th grade students from eight elementary schools, 648 students (59.4%) provided active consent. We utilized three main data collection methods: (1) biometric measurements and a child self-reported health instrument- the Child Health and Illness Profile-Child Edition (CHIP-CE) (2) the Children with Special Needs Screener (CSHCN) completed by parents to identify children with special needs and (3) data abstraction from the School District's systems to examine school achievement, absenteeism and other relevant data. The proportion of students in these eight schools who were categorized as at-risk or overweight (46%) exceed national prevalence rates; 7.4% of students screened positive for elevated blood pressure after one measurement only; and 21.5% of the students were identified as having at least one special health care need. Of the students who completed a CHIP-CE, 73% responded that their health was very good or excellent. We present the results by gender, grade and race/ethnicity and the implications for future interventions to address the health of this young urban population.