Introduction: Pennsylvania's Student Assistance Program (SAP) began in the mid-1980s to address student barriers to academic success. SAP teams, groups of trained school and community professionals, review referrals, and connect students to services. State leadership conducts an annual SAP team survey, but capacity to evaluate data and affect…

Chronic absenteeism is associated with poor health and educational outcomes. School nurses have great potential to address the health and educational needs that contribute to absenteeism. Through qualitative analysis of interviews with school nurses, we characterize their current role in reducing absenteeism and identify barriers 3 that limit…

The American Community Survey (ACS), a nationwide study collected continuously every year in every county in the United States, is designed to provide communities with reliable and timely demographic, social, economic, and housing data each year. These ACS estimates are not averages of monthly or annual values, but rather an aggregation of data…

Introduction: Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a critical health issue in the USA. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of drug overdose deaths per year, with the COVID-19 pandemic worsening these trends. Stigmatising beliefs towards OUD are associated with negative health outcomes, and there is a need for a larger evidence base on OUD stigma…

Background: The use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarette) offers potential to facilitate cigarette smoking cessation, yet potentially increases risk of cigarette smoking initiation. This relationship has been primarily modeled in mathematical ways that often do not represent real-world complexities, which could inform decisions regarding local…

Background: Project Connect is a national program to build partnerships among public health agencies and domestic violence services to improve the health care sector response to partner and sexual violence. Pennsylvania piloted the first school nurse-delivered adolescent relationship abuse intervention in the certified school nurses' office…

Recent media reporting and research suggest that regional comprehensive universities (RCUs) and other postsecondary institutions may play an integral role in the welfare of rural regions, yet empirical research on the regional service of rural postsecondary institutions is limited. The purpose of this study was to examine how a single RCU serves…

COVID-19 has profoundly affected educational institutions across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as it has in the rest of the country and around the world. Since March 2020, school buildings statewide have been closed. Although many schools have worked hard to provide instruction remotely, it is likely that schoolchildren all over the state are…

Engaged scholarship, translational science, integrated research, and interventionist research, all involve bringing research into a practical context. These usually require working with communities and institutions, and often involve community based participatory research. The article offers practical guidance for engaged research. The authors…

A study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the Handwashing University on teaching youth the benefits of proper handwashing. The Handwashing University is an interactive display with several successive stations through which participants move to learn necessary skills for proper handwashing. Upon completion of the Handwashing University,…

Background: Limited data indicate that obese children are absent from school more than their normal-weight peers. We analyzed administrative data from a large urban school district to investigate the association of obesity and student sociodemographic characteristics with absenteeism. Methods: We analyzed 291,040 records, representing 165,056…

The concept of the "food desert", an area with limited access to retail food stores, has increasingly been used within social scientific and public health research to explore the dimensions of spatial inequality and community well-being. While research has demonstrated that food deserts are frequently characterized by higher levels of…

Problem/Condition: Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a group of developmental disabilities characterized by atypical development in socialization, communication, and behavior. ASDs typically are apparent before age 3 years, with associated impairments affecting multiple areas of a person's life. Because no biologic marker exists for ASDs,…

In this report the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation (NIHCM) and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) focus on selective, exemplary collaborations between state health agencies and health plans to reduce overweight and obesity in children. The idea of collaboration is simple. Partner A agrees to…

Context: Preterm birth and low birthweight remain high priority public health problems and are associated with increased risk of infant mortality as well as long-term health impairments. Although 20% of all births nationally are to rural women, relatively little attention has been paid to pregnancy outcomes in rural areas relative to more…