School Health

• Hartland in the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union 
• Hartford School District 
• Orange East Supervisory Union 
• Orange Southwest Unified Union District
• Rivendell Interstate School District
• School Administrative Unit #70 
• White River Valley Supervisory Union
• Windsor Central School District 

Our school liaison is a nurse who works with schools, families and community partners in our region to improve health outcomes for school age children. The school liaison provides support to school nurses and works to promote wellness for the whole school community. We promote use of the School Nurse Manual and School Health Index as well as school wellness teams using the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child framework, farm to school programs and Safe Routes to School. We can assist with development of school policies and can help find grant opportunities to support this work.

The Safe Routes to School program helps make walking and biking to school safe and easy options to promote physical activity for children. The program can help your school develop a travel plan and identify structural needs such as sidewalks, signs and walking lanes. We can help you initiate and maintain programming to support use of the routes. This could include a weekly walking school bus, where children are dropped at a common location and walk together to school, or it could include walk/bike to school days. Wendy, our school liaison, is a Safe Routes to School Champion. For more information, visit the Safe Routes webpage.
 

We assist school nurses so they can better support student and family access to health services. Learn more about how we work with school nurses.

Today’s students come to school with more challenges related to health and learning than ever before. Essential School Health Services focuses on improving student outcomes, school attendance, the mitigation of challenges such as chronic health conditions, complex medical needs, and other barriers related to social determinants of health, such as poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, food and housing insecurity, and lack of health care.

We help schools support access to medical care and promote medical and dental homes for children and youth. We support school and health care provider relationships and sharing health records.  We support efforts to ensure families know recommended times for well-care visits, and what to expect at the visits following Bright Futures guidelines.

The 802 Smiles Network of School Dental Health Programs connects Vermont's various school dental health programs under one umbrella. Its goal is to eliminate oral health disparities and improve oral health for all Vermont children.

Learn More

• Dental Health Care in Vermont
• Health Care and Screening Guidelines
• Health Care for Children & Youth in Vermont
• Immunizations - K-12 School Nurses and Administrators
• Vermont Health Connect

The Health Department and the Vermont Agency of Education sponsor the Vermont Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The YRBS was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  to monitor priority health risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death, disease, injury and social problems among middle and high school students. We share this public health data with schools and communities to promote response to decrease risk behaviors.

We encourage schools to use YRBS data to make decisions about how to support student health. One way to do this is the Getting to Y program, which is an opportunity for students to take a lead in bringing meaning to their own Youth Risk Behavior Survey data, and to take steps to strengthen their school and community.

We help schools get grants to support proven strategies such as Farm-to-School, and Girls on the Run. Find out more about strategies to improve health of Vermont’s school-aged children.

School Wellness Teams promote and integrate health and develop policy in the school. The school liaison is a consultant and cheerleader to help the Wellness Teams navigate the process, and we encourage the use of data and evidence-based practices to achieve outcomes. One example of success is the Farm to School program at Thetford Elementary, which is looked to by many as a model program, and which benefitted from school liaison support.

Health Hub

We help local education agencies to meet the objectives of the Medicaid Administrative Claiming agreement.