Assess Conditions for Wellness

What do you want to learn about your school and the students it serves? How will your school wellness team use and share the data? What do the students and staff want and need to be well? What does wellness mean to them?

• Stakeholder involvement will build community investment and support for actions that result from the assessments.
• Have a plan in place to share the data back with stakeholders.
• To ensure next steps are reflective of community goals, include these stakeholders in the action planning as well.

• Find publicly available school data on graduation rates, suspensions, absenteeism, academic success, and existing school policies and practices.
• This process can also reveal existing health resources, services, and capacities in your community– illustrating existing conditions and illuminating opportunities to create other conditions for wellness.
• Determine if there are additional data your team needs to better understand trends, plot your actions, and achieve your vision.

• Select tools that include items to assess both physical and social-emotional health, as well as identifying social determinants of health (root causes).
• Consider using tools that identify the conditions needed for healthy school climate. This will provide a fuller understanding of the opportunities for positive change. 
• Choose widely accepted evidence-based tools. Determine if Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval is necessary for using the tool you select. Institutional review boards are committees who determines if research proposal methods are ethical for human subject research. [x] If you plan to disseminate or publish any of the data as research, [xi] IRB approval is required. However, if the assessment is strictly for public health practice, IRB approval might not be necessary. [xii]
• Identify tools that have low or zero cost, fit with your school’s existing and available technology, have limited barriers for data collection or data input, and allow for secure storage of private data.
• Select tools that are age-appropriate in content and language, and if needed, have translations available for non- English speaking students.
• Consider whether the school staff or the SBHC staff will administer the assessment or own the data, depending on state and local level HIPPA/FERPA considerations.

Before beginning the assessment, identify the approval process in your school/district. Determine which stakeholders need to be informed, and the process and timeline for getting an assessment approved. Consider what messages you will share with stakeholders to get them on board.

• Seek approval from administrators and other school leaders.
• Explain that your wellness team shares goals with the school staff [xiii] and wants to work with the school to address academic and educational challenges. By identifying root causes of health issues, the school can develop school-wide approaches to tackle simultaneous barriers to academic achievement and health, such as housing, food security, neighborhood safety, and the presence of caring adults [xiv], [xv]
• Use scientific literature to show the link between social determinants of health and academic outcomes, especially for low-income students.
• Share stories about how other SBHCs used data to identify strategic approaches, propose system changes, and institute new policies in their schools.

• Explain why you are collecting data from their child, how you will use it, and how it will help the school.
• Decide whether you need to use an opt-in/opt-out consent process and determine a process to get consent forms completed and returned. Consider sending letters home and using email as well.
• If it is important to guarantee that parents/guardians provide explicit permission for their student to complete the assessment, choose an opt- in consent form.
• Allow enough time to collect parental consent forms– at least a month– before administering an assessment instrument. This will increase the chances of reaching parents who move frequently or have disconnected numbers.

• Schedule sufficient time to assess all students/your sample, and provide enough staff resources to explain directions, the purpose of the assessment, and how the school will use the information. Survey administration is a team effort.
• Determine what sample you will survey if you can’t assess whole school. Think about assessing younger students so you can follow them over a few years. Don’t forget to translate, or obtain translated versions of your tools in appropriate languages for your students and staff.
• Make sure there is enough staff on hand to provide services in case mental health crises appear in assessment.
• Continue to assess on a yearly basis to track needs/met needs and to identify any shifts in needs.

• Work with your school wellness team to summarize the data. What stories are the data telling? What could deepen your understanding?
• Make sure you have enough support to analyze the data. Some assessments come with technical support for this purpose.