Step Up Be Counted! Creating a core data set for school nursing

Stories are powerful, but data changes policy and practice. Aggregated student data can assist public health leaders understand the concerns and strengths of a local community. The National Association of School Nurses and the National Association of State School Nurse Consultants are working together to develop a minimum data set for all school nurses to collect consistent, reliable data across the country. The “Step Up and Be Counted!” initiative has been embraced enthusiastically across the country. Each state has a Designated State Data Champion who serves as the contact for outreach, providing training and facilitating data entry into the national database. Local school nurses are currently collecting 15 data points; additional data points will be collected in future years after refining the process. This presentation will share preliminary results of the data collected during the 2014-15 school year and discuss how school nurses have successfully presented their data to state and local leaders. This presentation will also discuss the challenges, successes and lessons learned. As school and public health nurses collect data and are given tools to use the data that help improve work and articulate their impact they will be better able to assist educators, public health and other decision makers understand their impact on student health outcomes. Collecting data in a uniform way will allow for a more robust analysis that will help school nurse and population-based children’s research, advocacy, and practice efforts progress forward, and ultimately help our youth stay healthy and ready to learn.