The School Health Education and Services (SHES) section focuses on a population-based, coordinated approach to addressing and improving the health and well-being of students and staff members in preschool, K-12 school, and college settings. School health is public health. We invite abstracts that meet our focus and address current trends and innovations in school health education and services design and delivery, policy development, research, and evaluation.  Abstracts based on specific topics should be presented in context of the larger vision of school health.

Topics of interest include:

• A is for Adolescents: Assets-Based and Action-Oriented Approaches Instead of “At-Risk” or “Adverse Experience” Assignments
  The Adolescent and Young Adult Health Committee believes creating the healthiest nation requires helping our adolescents and young adults grow into the next generation of change agents in their communities. Our committee invites abstracts highlighting the abilities of young people to engage with their environment to impact health. In addition, we are interested in:
  • Approaches to youth health promotion that are asset-based or informed by Positive Youth Development;
  • Collaborations with youth in high school, college, and special populations (e.g., foster care) to promote health equity and/or social justice policies or practices;
  • Youth addressing social justice concerns around key health equity areas (e.g., environmental justice, food justice);
  • High-school-to-college health career pipelines and programs to increase the number of historically underrepresented minority students in public health and related health professions;
  • Youth-centered approaches for immigration, refugee, and migration issues;
  • Youth involved in public health policy development, oversight, and assurance (e.g., program, organizational, and governmental policy and/or governance/leadership).

  Successful submissions must demonstrate how adolescents and/or young adults were engaged in developing the research, policies, or practices in a way that also supported their training and growth.

• Addressing Diet and Physical Activity to Improve Quality of Life
  
• Addressing Oral Health Needs of Unique Populations Through Unique Partnerships
  
• Addressing youth concerns: Physical activity and nutrition
  
• Addressing youth concerns: Social & emotional connectedness
  
• Care Coordination, Medication Adherence, and Developmental Monitoring for CSHCN
  
• Child and Adolescent Health Disparities and Social Determinants of Child and Adolescent Health
  
• Children's Environmental Health
  Children's Environmental Health
  (e.g., fetal origins of chronic diseases, environmental risks at home and at school or daycare, environmental health risks with disproportionate impacts on children, disparate impacts of exposure, epigenetic change and contribution to obesity, interaction between environmental and maternal/child health)
• Children's vision and eye care needs
  
• College Health Initiatives
  
• Communicating about Diabetes Prevention and Control (organized by HCWG)
  
• Cooperative Extension Approaches to Behavioral Health Education
  
• Current trends in school health: Sexual health
  
• Emerging youth concerns
  
• Evaluating the Role of SNAP-Ed in Nutrition Education and Health
  Including, but not limited to, successful examples and results of: Community based and participatory action research; Youth engagement in program and policy development; Community coalitions addressing obesity, hunger, health equity; food policy councils; Collaborative models demonstrating collective impact in the area of food and nutrition (common agenda, shared measurement system, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone organization).
• Evaluation of Public Health Education and Health Promotion Programs
  
• Improving the Quality of Asthma Management
  
• Invited Session: How Do We Get There? Bridging the Gap Between Knowledge and Practice in Health Communication Intervention and Dissemination Research (organized by HCWG)
  
• Issues in alcohol use among adolescents and young adults
  
• Life as a Student: Understanding and Addressing Mental Health on College Campuses
  policy and/or practice approaches for perinatal and post-partum mental health, children's services, transition-age youth mental health, family supports
• Listen to the Unheard Voice: Challenges and Opportunities in Promoting Health and Well-Being Among Underserved High-Risk Youths and Adults (organized by HCWG)
  
• Medicaid and Economic Impact in Public Health
  
• National Initiatives Relating to Oral Health: Surgeon General's Report and others
  
• Physical activity among veterans, military or college population
  
• Physical activity and mental health
  
• Policies for sustainable, coordinated, comprehensive school health programs and services
  
• Poster Session I: State and Local OH Initiatives
  
• Poster Session II: Maternal and Child Oral Health
  
• Poster Session III: Fluorides and Caries Prevention
  
• Poster Session V: OH Among Special Needs Populations
  
• Promoting Vaccination: Challenges, Lessons, and Strategies (organized by HCWG)
  
• Promoting child Health and development: Science of ACEs, Action of Public-Private Partnerships and Primary Care Interventions to Improve Child Health
  In keeping with the annual APHA meeting theme, abstracts are sought that pertain to ensuring the right to health for infants and children.  Research that examines the effects of interventions and policies at the level of the individual family, the neighborhood, and the larger community to promote children’s health, development and well-being is of particular interest. More generally, the committee also welcomes abstracts on central themes related to infant and child health and health disparities including but not limited to preconception health and health care, preterm birth, infant and child morbidity and mortality, fetal alcohol syndrome, birth defects research and surveillance, newborn hearing and metabolic screening, developmental screening, autism and developmental disabilities, neurobehavioral and mental health, parenting, and child development.
• Public Health Nursing Championing Social Justice Posters
  
• Public Health Nursing Encouraging Population-Based Prevention and Health Promotion
  
• Public Health Nursing Health Promotion Strategies Posters
  
• Public Health Nursing Targeting Population Health
  
• Public Health Nursing: Leadership and Advocacy Posters
  
• SHES Poster Session: Health services
  
• SHES Poster Session: Mental health
  
• SHES Poster Session: Parents and community partners
  
• SHES Poster Session: Physical activity and nutrition
  
• SHES Poster Session: Reaching students
  
• SHES Poster Session: School health topics
  
• School Food Environments: Understanding Their Impact and Exploring Opportunities for Change
  
• School Health Education and Services: Outstanding Student Research
  
• School and Community Linkages to Improve Child Health (organized jointly with the School Health Education and Services section)
  
• School health data, research, and evaluation
  
• Sex education and communication
  
• Smoking Out the Problem: Ongoing Public Health Research and Initiatives to Address Tobacco Use (organized by HCWG)
  
• Student health: Connecting schools with communities
  
• Substance Abuse
  
• Suicide Impact on Youth
  including systemic strategies to implement trauma informed approaches; community resilience; violence prevention, wellness and recovery practices; non-medical, spiritual and non-Western approaches to mental health
• Tools and Consideration for Sexual Health Education
  
• Training Youth to be Leaders in Public Health
  
• VCS Poster Session 2
  
• Violence Prevention Among Children and Youth Adults: Research and Program
  Violence Prevention in Families and Communities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Family Violence Prevention. Preventing family and community violence is essential to the promotion of wellness across the lifespan. Many disciplines contribute critical knowledge and perspectives to the use of theory, data, interventions, evaluation approaches, and policy development to family violence prevention and intervention efforts. By exploring these various efforts we can better prevent all forms of family violence across the lifespan, including child maltreatment, partner abuse, elder mistreatment, dating violence, and sibling abuse.  Community violence prevention programs of many kinds are also critical.   Submissions in any of these areas are of interest, and submissions exploring primary prevention programs are of particular interest.
• Youth as agents of change for tobacco control
  

Abstracts should be no more than 250 words. All presenters must be individual members of APHA to present and must register for the meeting. Abstracts cannot be presented or published in any journal prior to the APHA Annual Meeting. You must include learner-centered objectives with your abstract. Please use one of the examples of measurable action words provided on the submission form and format your learning objectives according to APHA's specific instructions. These are needed so we can get ANCC, MCHES, and CHES credit for our sessions.

Peer reviewers will assess the suitability of abstracts for presentation on the above format and the following criteria:

1. Significance of study in relation to school health
2. Appropriate methodology
3. Significance of findings/results
4. Quality of conclusions or recommendations
5. Focus on a population-based, coordinated approach to addressing health
6. Usefulness for supporting or strengthening school health and the health of children, adolescents, and college students

The section will present an award for “Outstanding Student Research in School Health.” Preference will be given to completed research rather than to proposed projects or pilot studies. Currently enrolled students in public health, health education, nursing, medicine, social work, counseling, and related programs of study are strongly encouraged to submit abstracts of research work performed to satisfy academic coursework or requirements. Be sure to identify your academic program and institution. 

Continuing Education Credit

APHA values the ability to provide continuing education credit to physicians, nurses, health educators, veterinarians, and those certified in public health at its annual meeting. Please complete all required information when submitting an abstract so members can claim credit for attending your session. These credits are necessary for members to keep their licenses and credentials.

For a session to be eligible for Continuing Education Credit, each presenter must provide:

• An abstract free of trade and/or commercial product names
• At least one MEASURABLE outcomes (DO NOT USE “To understand” or “To learn” as objectives, they are not measurable). Examples of Acceptable Measurable Action Words:  Explain, Demonstrate, Analyze, Formulate, Discuss, Compare, Differentiate, Describe, Name, Assess, Evaluate, Identify, Design, Define or List.
• A signed Conflict of Interest (Disclosure) form with a relevant Qualification Statement. See an example of an acceptable Qualification Statement on the online Disclosure form.

Contact Mighty Fine at mighty.fine@apha.org if you have any questions concerning continuing education credit. Please contact the program planner for all other questions.

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Ready?

Program Planner Contact Information:

Erin Maughan, PhD, MS, RN, PHNA-BC, FNASN, FAAN
National Association of School Nurses
1100 Wayne Ave, Suite 925
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Phone: 240-247-1624
emaughan@nasn.org

and
Samira Soleimanpour, PhD
Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies
University of California San Francisco
3333 California Street
Suite 265
San Francisco, CA 94143-0936
Phone: 4152358208
samira.soleimanpour@ucsf.edu

and
Kelly Beckwith, MPH, CHES
Department of Global and Community Health
George Mason University
4400 University Dr MS 5B7
Fairfax, VA 22030
Phone: 703-993-4555
kbeckwi2@gmu.edu