A Healthy Education

A lot more goes on in schools than the three Rs, and a lot more can be discerned about the health and well being of children by using schools as the laboratory through which to investigate a variety of health care issues. As a health reporting fellow, I'll be joining my interest and experience in covering health and education by exploring the convergence of both within schools in the Bay Area, the readership audience for The Bay Citizen, where I work.

Schools are a great place to report on kids and their various health issues for a couple of reasons that are mostly obvious. That is where you find children for hours every day, and they bring with them from their families and neighborhoods the many and varied health-related problems and challenges they face. School officials--from teachers and principals to other administrators-- also are endowed with certain authority under the legal doctrine en loco parentis--in the place of parents. Any signs of child abuse or neglect must be reported to police by school staff, for example, as part of that obligation to protect the welfare of their young charges.

I'll be exploring how the health and well being of students intersects with the mission of schools to educate them in a series of articles that peel away different layers of that theme. A healthy student will be best able to take fullest advantage of learning opportunities in a school, and those with more health challenges will be disadvantaged in learning and consequently, in life.