title: Building sustainable health and education partnerships: stories from local communities.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Growing health disparities have a negative impact on young people's educational achievement. Community schools that involve deep relationships with partners across multiple domains address these disparities by providing opportunities and services that promote healthy development of young people, and enable them to graduate from high school ready for college, technical school, on-the-job training, career, and citizenship.
  
  
  METHODS
  Results from Milwaukie High School, North Clackamas, OR; Oakland Unified School District, Oakland, CA; and Cincinnati Community Learning Centers, Cincinnati, OH were based on a review of local site documents, web-based information, interviews, and e-mail communication with key local actors.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The schools and districts with strong health partnerships reflecting community schools strategy have shown improvements in attendance, academic performance, and increased access to mental, dental, vision, and health supports for their students.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  To build deep health-education partnerships and grow community schools, a working leadership and management infrastructure must be in place that uses quality data, focuses on results, and facilitates professional development across sectors. The leadership infrastructure of community school initiatives offers a prototype on which others can build. Moreover, as leaders build cross-sector relationships, a clear definition of what scaling up means is essential for subsequent long-term systemic change.
authors.affiliation: 4301 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 100, Washington, DC 20008. blankm@iel.org.
authors.forename: Martin J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Blank
mesh_terms: D002140:California; D003256:Community Participation; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D004522:Educational Status; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007857:Leadership; D009111:Local Government; D009820:Ohio; D009922:Oregon; D011635:Public Health Administration; D012572:School Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012574:Schools; D013334:Students
keywords: community schools; community-school partnerships; cross-sector partnerships; education outcomes; health equity; health outcomes; leadership infrastructure