Assessing School Health Services
High-quality school health services can improve child and adolescent health and help to increase academic success. To serve all students’ health and wellness needs safely and effectively, an in-depth assessment of the current and future needs will help schools to provide optimal services, ensuring that students are healthy and ready to learn. Decisions around staffing, services, and programs should be data informed to respond to the specific health and safety needs of the students and the school community.
A needs assessment may be conducted by communicating with representatives of the school and community through surveys, face-to-face interviews, focus groups and/or by reviewing health statistics and student data (e.g., Minnesota Student Survey, local public health or local health system community needs assessment) from state and local sources. If data is not locally available, reviewing state and national data and trends is useful.
Schools can benefit from self-assessment that help identify strengths and weaknesses and give insight on creating effective action plans for improving student health using the following resources. To understand the unique needs of a school or district, it is recommended to conduct these assessments using a team approach with multiple school and community stakeholders.
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Health services Assessment Tool for Schools (HATS)
The Health services Assessment Tool for Schools, or “HATS” for short, is designed to help school districts and states assess the quality and comprehensiveness of school health services, the level of infrastructure to support those services and the strength and implementation of school health services policies and protocols. The tool sets a "gold standard" benchmark for comprehensive school health services that districts and states can strive to achieve. It is intended as a self-assessment tool, not a way to evaluate school districts and/or states.
School districts and states can use this self-scoring online tool to identify areas of strength and weakness and track improvements over time. Completing this tool is an important first step toward evaluating and improving school health services policies, practices, and infrastructure with the ultimate goal of improving the health and well-being of all students (AAP, 2022).
School Health Assessment and Performance Evaluation (SHAPE) System
The SHAPE system offers schools, districts, and states a platform with targeted resources to support school mental health quality improvement. Schools and districts can use SHAPE to evaluate strengths and identify areas of improvement, identify and document mental health resources across multiple tiers of support, and utilize data driven strategies to improve quality.
CDC School Health Index (SHI) Self-Assessment and Planning Guide
The School Health Index (SHI) Self-Assessment and Planning Guide is an online self-evaluation and planning tool for schools. It aligns with the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. The SHI is built on CDC’s research-based guidelines for school health programs that identify the policies and practices most likely to be effective in reducing youth health risk behaviors. The SHI (and related materials) is available as an interactive, customizable online tool or downloadable, printable version and is completely confidential.
The CDC also has excellent tools for examining physical and health education.