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. 2021 Mar 17;16(3):e0247909.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247909. eCollection 2021.

Advancing health equity by addressing social determinants of health: Using health data to improve educational outcomes

Mary Jo Rattermann  1 , Azure Angelov  1 , Tommy Reddicks  2 , Jess Monk  2
Affiliations

Advancing health equity by addressing social determinants of health: Using health data to improve educational outcomes

Mary Jo Rattermann et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Data from two social determinants of health-access to health care and access to a quality education-are combined to examine the impact of health on student achievement. Data from a high poverty, high performing K-8 school revealed a significant negative correlation between the number of visits to a school-based nurse and standardized academic assessments. Fixed effect regression confirmed the effect of total number of visits to the school-based nurse on performance on standardized assessments, and also revealed that two types of visits, neurological and gastrointestinal, were predictive of student performance. Taken together, these results suggest that when students are suffering from ill health their academic performance is negatively impacted. Implications for improving health equity through data-driven educational interventions are discussed.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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