The Massachusetts Action Coalition MAAC, which is co-led by the Organization of Nurse Leaders ONL and part of a national campaign to build a culture of health across the nation, proposes to develop and implement an initiative to promote health literacy and overall health and wellness of students in selected communities. In this phased project, we intend to utilize the existing structure of School Wellness Committees SWC, which are mandated by M.G.L. c.111, 233, 105 CMR 215.000 to establish standards for School Wellness Advisory Committees in each school district in the Commonwealth under the Department of Public Health DPH regulations, as the venue in which we plan to increase and strengthen nursing representation to influence school polices addressing school nutrition, physical activity and related health issues that impact student health as identified by the community. The initiative would pilot an innovative collaboration between the MAAC nurses with the National Library of Medicine NLM and the Massachusetts Health Council MHC both of which provide an impressive list of educational resources that the nurses will access and use in developing educational programming to increase awareness and offer the resources to the SWC members, who in turn, will use those to develop their student education and the school health program. Over the first year there will be three cycles of engagement with increasing numbers of nurses, SWC members and students that has potential for eventual spread across the state. The impact of this initiative fully supports the NLM goals to increase awareness of the NLM information resources, build a reputation as the primary resource for reliable and authentic content, the provision of training in the use of medical information resources and in using collaborative partnerships to strengthen the connectivity for health.
Project Details
Organization of Nurse Leaders
Patricia Crombie