Advancing Health Equity by Addressing Social Determinants of Health: Using Health Data to Improve Educational Outcomes

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2021 Mar 17

PMID 33730057

Citations 1

Authors

Mary Jo Rattermann

Azure Angelov

Tommy Reddicks

Jess Monk

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Data from two social determinants of health-access to health care and access to a quality education-are combined to examine the impact of health on student achievement. Data from a high poverty, high performing K-8 school revealed a significant negative correlation between the number of visits to a school-based nurse and standardized academic assessments. Fixed effect regression confirmed the effect of total number of visits to the school-based nurse on performance on standardized assessments, and also revealed that two types of visits, neurological and gastrointestinal, were predictive of student performance. Taken together, these results suggest that when students are suffering from ill health their academic performance is negatively impacted. Implications for improving health equity through data-driven educational interventions are discussed.

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