Hawaii Keiki: Healthy and Ready to Learn
The Hawaii Keiki: Healthy and Ready to Learn Program provides access to school nursing services in Hawaii public schools. The program began in 2014 with the Hawaii State Department of Education and in 2023 expanded to serve select schools within the Hawaii State Public Charter School Commission.
The program sits at the intersection of education and health to achieve student, school, and system success. The program enhances and builds school-based health services that:
- screens for treatable health conditions;
- provides referral to primary health care and patient centered medical home services;
- prevents and controls communicable disease;
- and provides emergency care for illness or injury.
Students succeed academically when they come to school ready to learn. The evidence is clear that hunger, chronic illness, or physical and emotional abuse, can lead to poor school performance. Health-risk behaviors such as substance use, violence, and physical inactivity are consistently linked to academic failure and often affect school attendance, grades, test scores, and ability to pay attention in class. School-based health programs have been found to decrease dismissal from school and are associated with better attendance.
Goals
The Hawaii Keiki Program has five core goals:
- Reduce preventable health-related chronic absenteeism and minimize interruption to instructional time.
- Enhance wellness in the school environment and community.
- Promote optimal student health through preventive screening and effective services for chronic health conditions.
- Collaborate with community partners and organizations to provide coordinated school health programs, services and resources.
- Promote the nursing profession.
Hawaii Keiki (HK) staff proudly deliver our mission from a place of compassion with heart and aloha. These values are the guiding principles that direct the program and its culture. The program effectively utilizes a variety of healthcare professionals and creative approaches such as telehealth to improve access to care, while focusing on collaborating with community partners to bring additional health services, education, and resources that impact health in schools, locally as well as statewide.
School Nursing
School nurses provide health services that can improve a student’s school attendance, learning and the overall health and effectiveness of the school. School nursing is a specialty within nursing that requires expertise in child health and development. School nurses screen students for a variety of conditions that impact learning, including vision, hearing and developmental conditions. They provide episodic care, manage chronic conditions, track communicable diseases, promote healthy behaviors, connect children with insurance and health-care providers, and handle emergencies.
School nurses perform health and safety assessment including administering medications and being first responders to injured students or those who suffer from seizures. Monitoring and attending to students with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes and seizures significantly decreases the number of days they miss from school.
School Nurse Certification
HK nurses with more than 1,000 hours of school nurse experience within 3 years and who pass a rigorous exam can achieve certification from the National Board Certification for School Nurses. By bringing certified school nurses into the academic environment, school administrators and teachers can focus their primary efforts on teaching rather than on health concerns. The school and community also benefit by having students that are healthy and actively engaged in their learning resulting in academic success and opportunities for future success and growth.
The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model
The HK program is built on the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model that expands on the eight elements of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) coordinated school health (CSH) approach and is combined with the whole child framework.
Launched in early 2014, the CDC and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) developed this expanded model—in collaboration with key leaders from the fields of health, public health, education, and school health—to strengthen a unified and collaborative approach designed to improve learning and health in our nation’s schools. The WSCC focuses on the child to align the common goals of education, public health and school health sectors. The expanded model integrates the ten components of a coordinated school health (CSH) program with the tenets of a whole child approach to education.
Contact
Hawaii Keiki: Healthy & Ready to Learn
2528 McCarthy Mall, Webster 402
Honolulu, HI 96822
Phone: (808) 956-8522
Email: hikeiki@hawaii.edu
Health Hotline (Toll Free): (844) 436-3888
Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., excluding holidays & breaks
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