Data collection helps school nurses define their practice and the needs of their students. The National School Health Data Set: Every Student Counts! initiative encourages school nurses around the country to collect data that describes what they do to improve the lives of their students. This aggregate data tells a story to share with administrators and other stakeholders about what school nurses do to help protect and promote student health and readiness to learn. By collecting data points that share the same definition across districts, regions, and states, data from individual school nurses can be combined to create a national data set - hence the name "The National Health Data Set - Every Student Counts!"
With data, there is power in numbers. Real data on student health concerns and information on how schools are managing those concerns can help school nurses advocate for local, state, and national policies, as well as take a look at schools with nurses and those without. The more schools that participate in the National Health Data Set, the more school nurses will have benchmarks to measure how school nurse interventions compare with similar schools across the state or country. Analysis of the data set helps to identify best practices in school health to better support student needs, creating evidence for high-quality school nursing practice. And the data you collect can help you tell your story with impact and credibility.