Event One: Strengthening Our Practice: Refining Our Aim __________________________________________________________________________ Ask Us About - 1.1 San Francisco __________________________________________________________________________
North Dakota Coordinated School Health
Providing 24 Years of CSH PD to Rural North Dakota
Unique to North Dakota is the annual Roughrider Health Promotion Conference, which has provided 24 years of continuous professional development opportunities for educators and community members to address Coordinated School Health (CSH) physical activity, nutrition, and tobacco/alcohol (PANT) related issues. School teams, composed of administrators, educators, board members, school nurses, counselors, parents, and community professionals and leaders, complete the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s School Health Index (SHI) assessment. They then develop a SHI data-driven action plan of goals and activities during the conference. The North Dakota Department of Health’s CSH staff provides technical assistance and follow-up for a year to help ensure that teams implement their action plans and sustain progress during the upcoming school year.
As a part of the action plan follow-up process, each team is required to submit a success story relating to one of action plans and PANT goals. Eight exemplary success stories are chosen by CSH staff representing the eight CSH components. The highlighted success stories function as the CSH staff’s tool to demonstrate the significant impact of team attendance at the Roughrider Health Promotion conference. To communicate these successes to the community and build relationships, the CSH staff members travel to the respective communities and make CSH success story presentations to the local school boards that supported the school/community team endeavors.
Marketing the success stories to the communities not only magnifies the community involvement, thereby creating continuing successful impacts, but also rewards the team and partners who set out to accomplish the goal.
