Denise Seigart, chair of the undergraduate nursing program in the School of Nursing, was invited to present at the Health Services in Schools: From Cost Effective Studies to Distributional Justice conference on May 29 at Stanford University.
The conference was hosted by the Division of General Pediatrics and sponsored by the Stanford McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and the Stanford Humanities Center. The conference invited scholars, practitioners and colleagues to examine the common themes and challenges of providing health care services in schools in California and other states.
Seigart presented “International Collaborative Study Comparing Models for School Based Health Care in the United States of America, Canada and Australia,” which compared and contrasted school-based health care in these nations through a series of interpretive case studies. Unlike the US, school students in Canada and Australia rarely have access to school-based health care on site. All three nations face structural, cultural and societal barriers, often related to limited resources, which limit the effectiveness of school-based health care. The benefits of school-based health care and providing comprehensive services through schools can include healthier children, better learning, healthier parents, and healthier communities. Unfortunately, based on this research, comprehensive school health services have not been adequately implemented in the US, Canada or Australia. Seigart has found that increased comprehensive school-based health services are urgently needed in the US, Canada and Australia.