Page 24 - MMP-N-NJ CCN 21st Century School Nurse Leadership Book

Steps to Gaining Buy-in and Leading Change and Transformation (Kotter, 2007).
See Making Change Happen (p.7):

1. Establish sense of urgency.

• Motivating statement (often communicated to key school administrative
decision maker(s)):

Dear Mr./Ms. Administrator,

There is compelling evidence that there is a connection between missing
school and health. I know that this represents a lost learning opportunity for
our students when they are not in the classroom. As our school health leader,
I am interested in helping our district better understand some of the reasons
why our students are absent. We know that chronic absenteeism leads to
lower academic success. The lower the education an adult has, the more likely
they are to smoke, develop diabetes, be overweight (Rafa, 2017; Balfanz &
Byrnes, 2012; Meng, Babey, & Wolstein, 2012; Basch, 2011). I am starting with
tracking absenteeism among students with asthma in our building because our
county assessment has higher risk factors associated with poor management
of asthma and chronic diseases: 13.6% are uninsured, 14.6% of adults smoke,
contributing to second hand smoke in the home, and 11.4% have asthma here
in our city (New Jersey Department of Health, 2015). One of the top reasons
students are absent is due to lack of access to health care (Balfanz & Byrnes,
2012; Henderson, Hill, & Norton 2014). I know absenteeism is a complex issue.
I want to contribute to the body of evidence our school creates to inform
our decisions about future interventions to improve our children’s regular
attendance at school.

• Examine the literature and community assessment: In addition, the following areas
related to this are:

School Community Health Problem/Needs Assessment:
• Obtain district and school-based absenteeism data, need benchmark.
• Obtain absentee data if available, on students identified with asthma as benchmark.
• Obtain county and community local health assessment data at New Jersey State
Health Assessment Data (https://www26.state.nj.us/doh-shad/home/
DemoRequest.html)
• Identify available resources that may already have templates, guides, resources.

• Identify potential solution based upon scan of literature and relevant sources of
information.

Utilize national toolkit resources:
Download Attendanceworks.org Toolkit
(http://www.attendanceworks.org/attendancemonth/count-us-in-toolkit/)
Healthy Schools Campaign Chronic Absenteeism Toolkit
(https://healthyschoolscampaign.org/chronic-absenteeism/)
CDC Strategies for Addressing Asthma in Schools
(https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/asthma/strategies/asthmacsh.htm)
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