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Staff indoor environmental health sciences literacy and data collection on attendance and reasons for absence (asthma), tardiness and leaving early in elementary schools


The four specific objectives (aims) of our project (summer 2006-fall 2008) are listed below.

  1. Examine the feasibility of planning/scheduling, recruiting targeted participants and conducting half-day, three-part, EHS workshops in collaboration with their health departments and school districts. The participants will be school district nurses, school clinic assistants, and teachers of 4th and 5th grade students in targeted, recruited public elementary schools in regions of De Kalb County and Fulton County, GA.
  2. With a one-page, two-sided, self-administered survey based on validated questions from three identified sources (two written, one graphic) that would take most people 5-10 minutes to complete, in English and in Spanish, assess the basic knowledge/awareness of EHS (baseline versus after workshop) of participants, and evaluate these EHS workshops. 
  3. To further develop and test a simple spreadsheet-based methodology, previously proven in a school-based study in the Pacific Northwest, for collecting information on school attendance that would be enhanced to distinguish between all students and diagnosed asthmatics. 
  4. To develop and test a new, simple checklist (spreadsheet)-based methodology for collecting information on student tardiness and leaving early from school, and reasons among those identified in collaboration with local partners.  It would be on a clipboard in each school's main office.  At present, these kinds of data are not systematically and simply captured by enrollment and daily attendance metrics at public or private primary and secondary schools.