title: Association between school district policies that address chronic health conditions of students and professional development for school nurses on such policies.
abstract: Supportive school policies and well-prepared school nurses can best address the needs of students with chronic health conditions. We analyzed nationally representative data from the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study to examine whether districts with policies requiring that schools provide health services to students with chronic health conditions were more likely to provide funding for professional development (PD) or offer PD to school nurses on those health services than districts without such policies. Compared to districts without certain requirements for health services related to chronic health conditions, districts with those requirements were more likely to provide PD on related topics (for all comparisons, p ≤ .001). For some topics, however, regardless of district requirements, PD was fairly low and suggests the need for increases in the rates at which districts provide PD to support school nurses who deliver services to students with chronic health conditions.
authors.affiliation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA sce2@cdc.gov.
authors.forename: S Everett
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.affiliation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA.
authors.forename: Nancy D
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Brener
authors.affiliation: College of Nursing, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Martha Dewey
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Bergren
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D012572:School Health Services; D012573:School Nursing / Q000193:education* / Q000379:methods*; D012574:Schools; D013192:Staff Development; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: chronic diseases; continuing education; professional development; school policies