Blog Posts

By Linda B. Sheriff, Deputy Director at the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools   We’ve all seen the headlines, if not witnessed it in schools – while student mental health challenges were high prior to COVID-19, there are recent reports that they have increased dramatically. Fear of COVID-19, the sickness and death of loved ones, isolation and lack of peer interactions, and dearth of physical activity and social, emotional, and behavioral learning

By Linda B. Sheriff, Deputy Director and Olga Acosta Price, Director at the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools   As anticipated by many, schools are now facing an increase in social, emotional, and behavioral challenges. The traumatic events of the COVID-19 pandemic and the stress, grief, and loss it has caused can lead to numerous emotional and behavioral responses in students and staff, such as depressive symptoms and anxiety, difficulties with self-regulation,

By Evelyn Frankford, Principal of Frankford Consulting, Senior Associate at the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools Children with family members who struggle with opioid addiction are as much victims of the epidemic as the adults themselves, not only as neonates but over a longer period, as they proceed through childhood and school, according to researchers at Education Development Center (EDC).[1] Over the long term, familial opioid addiction and overdoses place these children

By Evelyn Frankford, Principal of Frankford Consulting, Senior Associate at the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools Even though knowledge about prevention has burgeoned, it is not easy to find pipelines for getting this knowledge and attendant positive child development practices into the institutions that serve children. Yet, this gap also offers an opportunity: As school-community partnerships, more ad hoc and flexible than large statutory systems, become more widespread, they are positioned to

By Linda B. Sheriff, Deputy Director of the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools What do you do to improve student outcomes when you are in charge of a school district of over 6,000 students, with more than 70 percent of the student body qualifying for free and reduced-priced school meals, with more than 50 different languages spoken, and you serve children in a mid-sized town surrounded by farmland with no major external

By Linda Sheriff, Deputy Director of The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools The Fourth of July has always been one of my favorite holidays and it wasn’t until this year that I realized that it was because it was a community event, one where everyone gathered to celebrate our shared values together – not to mention to eat pie and watch fireworks. It was too hot to picnic this year, so I