State Superintendent health care policy briefing speech

State Superintendent Jack O'Connell

School Health Center Policy Briefing Event

Manual Arts High School, Los Angeles

February 27, 2009

We're all here today because we want California's children to be healthy, well educated, and fully prepared for the future.

About two years ago, I declared that my top priority is to close California's persistent achievement gap between students who are African American and Latino and their white or Asian peers.

But while we focus in on our efforts to close the achievement gap, we must also be mindful of an important factor significantly influencing student performance, and that factor is student health.

We know children have difficulty learning when they are troubled by unmet health needs.

With over 6 million students enrolled our schools, California has more public school students than the entire populations of 35 other states and faces a multitude of related challenges, including keeping kids healthy and in school.

In California, 763,000 children are uninsured, and an additional 300,000 are at risk of losing health coverage as a result of our difficult economic times.

The prevalence rates of poor diet, physical inactivity and overweight are high among California children and youth.

More than 16 percent of our adolescents are overweight or obese and over 8 percent of elementary age children are overweight or obese. 

Along with the increasing obesity epidemic, rates of type 2 diabetes continue to rise in children. while there are no accurate numbers for children with type 2 in California, there are 13,500 children with type I diabetes.

Another chronic health problem is asthma - nearly one million of California's school children suffer from asthma.

While some children with asthma are medically well managed, many others struggle on a daily basis with their disease. 

This is significant because more school days are missed due to asthma than to any other chronic disease. 

So the question is: how do we keep these kids healthy so that they are able to take full advantage of the education we offer them in the classroom?

The answer, to a large extent, is through California's 153 school based health centers. 

The work done by physicians, nurse practitioners, mental health professionals, social workers, and other staff at these centers is invaluable.

But we can and we must do more to supplement the work of these centers, and two of the most effective ways to do this is by increasing the number of school based health centers at least to the minimum of 500 recommended by the governor a few years ago and increasing the number of credentialed school nurses in our public schools. 

We need many more of them so that every child in California public schools has access to health care expertise and support provided by our school based health centers and school nurses. 

To put things in perspective, there are slightly over 2800 full-time school nurses for California's nearly 6.3 million students for an average ratio of 1 school nurse to every 2230 students.

This is unacceptable and it must change.

Between school based health centers and school nurses, students who are ill or injured can often be seen, treated, and returned to class in a timely fashion and before a minor illness or injury becomes exacerbated, and would require the student to miss school.

And so, it is critical that we work together with our elected officials and our school-community partners to develop and implement a model of school health services for California that appropriately addresses the health needs of students while they are at school and keeps them healthy, fit, and ready to learn.