Over the last 25 years, I have seen how the needs inside our school health offices have multiplied. What once was manageable is now layered, constant, and inseparable from the complexities students bring with them. Students arrive carrying more health concerns, more anxiety, more instability, and, too often, fewer supports. So do the adults... The… Continue reading The Relentless School Nurse: When the Work Outgrows the System

Earlier today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a major cut to the childhood vaccination schedule, significantly reducing the number of routine immunizations recommended for children. Framed as an expansion of “flexibility” and “individual decision-making,” the announcement offered little public explanation of the evidence supporting the cuts, or of the risks created by… Continue reading The Relentless School Nurse: Cutting the Childhood Vaccination Schedule Is “Health Policy Malpractice.”

Returning in January, after the pause, often feels less like easing back in the pool and more like jumping directly in the deep end—no warm-up, no shallow water, no gradual reentry. The systems we stepped away from did not rest. The conditions did not improve. The needs did not shrink. What changes is not the… Continue reading The Relentless School Nurse: After the Pause

As this new year begins, I’ve been thinking less about whether school nurses will stay or leave, and more about how we respond to the conditions we are already in. School nursing is not practiced in a neutral landscape. The work is shaped by underinvestment, politicized public health decisions, widening student needs, and a long-standing… Continue reading The Relentless School Nurse: Meeting the Moment

  Grandparents For Vaccines (GFV) has been named one of the new public health coalitions "standing up for science," by Katelyn Jetelina, author of Your Local Epidemiologist. That recognition comes in the middle of the worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years, a moment when clear, trusted, pro-vaccine voices are not optional. They are… Continue reading The Relentless School Nurse: Grandparents For Vaccines is a Public Health Win!