On June 11, 2025, NINR hosted the convening, Advancing Nursing Research to Support Healthy School Environments for All. The overall goal of the convening was to elevate the role of nursing research in promoting healthy school environments to improve health and prevent chronic disease for all students. This involved identifying opportunities for nursing research to move the school health field forward by uncovering scientific gaps and discovering research innovations to accelerate progress.
Why School Health Matters to Nursing
Schools are a critical environment that affects health during childhood and throughout the life course. Nursing, in its holistic perspective, considers the whole person and their surrounding context in promoting health and wellbeing. Given this perspective, nursing is uniquely positioned to lead the development of scientific evidence to address real-world challenges that impact school health. As such, NINR identified school health as its second strategic imperative aimed at closing significant research gaps in the field and promoting research to address the myriad complex physical, mental, social, emotional, and environmental challenges that influence student’s health and academic achievement.
A Demonstrated Interest
Nearly 600 people registered for the convening across academic and community organizations, nursing associations, professional societies, and health and school systems. This response demonstrates enthusiastic scientific and community interest in advancing nursing research to create healthy school environments to promote health and well-being for all students.
School Health Convening Overview
The convening consisted of didactic presentations, flash talks, and open discussion, including a keynote speaker and three scientific panels focused on school environments, ecosystem approaches to school health, and the interface between health and educational quality. The convening highlighted successes, gaps, and the ways that nursing research is poised to meet the current challenges in the school health field. The convening also focused on practical implications of school health research – how existing scientific knowledge can be translated to and scaled-up in school settings.
Keynote Speaker
The keynote presentation highlighted the historical origins of school health, trends in the field, the unique contributions of nursing to school health, and bold research opportunities for nursing to advance the field to improve health for all children.
Panel 1: School Health Environments: Research Successes, Gaps, and Opportunities
This panel focused on factors within the school and school system that influence child health outcomes in the immediate and long-term. Presentations covered school or district level policies, practices and programs, social dynamics, health centers, and food environments.
Panel 2: Ecosystem Approaches to Improving School Health
This panel provided insight into the broader ecosystem in which schools operate that impact child health. Specifically, presentations focused on the influence of neighborhood environments such as parks, playgrounds, and other social spaces where youth connect.
Panel 3: Addressing Educational Quality to Advance Health Across the Lifespan
This panel highlighted the bidirectional influence of educational quality on health and educational outcomes. Presentations focused on the importance of academic achievement from multiple viewpoints including school attendance and the provision of resources through fostering clinical and community linkages.
Flash Talks
The convening included a series of flash talks highlighting the practical implications of school health research and the translation of available evidence to schools and surrounding environments. These brief presentations provided insightful discussion on best approaches for addressing translation gaps and overcoming barriers to evidence implementation.
Where Do We Go From Here
The school health convening was an important first step in highlighting the critical role of nursing research in advancing the science of school health. Widespread scientific and community interest suggests that a reinvigorated focus on school health is both timely and critically important to ensure that every student has the opportunity to achieve their full health potential. As NINR advances its school health strategic imperative, the Institute seeks to promote solutions-focused nursing research to develop, evaluate, and scale up innovative evidence-based school health interventions to improve the health and well-being of all students.
