Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Aug;92(8):812-814.
doi: 10.1111/josh.13159. Epub 2022 Mar 13.

Implementation of Stock Epinephrine in Chartered Versus Unchartered Public-School Districts

Kathryn B Neupert  1   2 , Margaret P Huntwork  1 , Chioma Udemgba  1   3 , John C Carlson  1
Affiliations

Implementation of Stock Epinephrine in Chartered Versus Unchartered Public-School Districts

Kathryn B Neupert et al. J Sch Health. 2022 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Access to unassigned epinephrine is critical for schools to treat anaphylaxis. Low socioeconomic status is associated with decreased access to epinephrine in the school setting. In and around New Orleans, physicians partner with schools to assist with stocking unassigned epinephrine autoinjectors (EAIs). New Orleans' decentralized public charter school district makes widespread adoption challenging.

Methods: Physicians partnered with New Orleans decentralized public charter schools, as well as neighboring centralized public school districts, to perform training on recognizing and treating anaphylaxis, assist with the adoption of school policy for stock epinephrine, and aid with obtaining stock EIAs free-of-cost through the EpiPen4Schools® program. We used publicly available school enrollment data and our own calendar records to calculate how many children we covered with stock epinephrine per hour of physician or administrator time.

Results: For centralized school districts, we cover approximately 4000 children with stock epinephrine per hour of time. For the decentralized district of New Orleans, we estimate covering only 400 children with stock epinephrine per hour of time.

Conclusion: Decentralized school districts reduce educational disparities, but require more time and energy to get EAIs in place than centralized school districts do.

Keywords: EAI; New Orleans; advocacy; anaphylaxis; charter schools; epinephrine; school health; schools.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

All authors of this article declare they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Student Enrollment in Public Schools With and Without Prescriptions for Stock Epinephrine by Our Team Within 4 Parishes in Southeast Louisiana
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Shah SS, Parker CL, O'Brian Smith E, Davis CM. Disparity in the availability of injectable epinephrine in a large, diverse US school district. J Allergy Clin Immunol Pract. 2014;2:288‐293.e1. - PubMed
    1. Feuille E, Lawrence C, Volel C, Sicherer SH, Wang J. Time trends in food allergy diagnoses, epinephrine orders, and epinephrine administrations in New York City schools. J Pediatr. 2017;190:93‐99. - PubMed
    1. DeSantiago‐Cardenas L, Rivkina V, Whyte SA, Harvey‐Gintoft BC, Bunning BJ, Gupta RS. Emergency epinephrine use for food allergy reactions in Chicago Public Schools. Am J Prev Med. 2015;48:170‐173. - PubMed
    1. Neupert K, Cherian S, Varshney P. Epinephrine use in Austin Independent School District after implementation of unassigned epinephrine. J Allergy Clin Immunol Pract. 2019;7:1650‐1652.e4. - PubMed
    1. National Charter School Study. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University; 2013.

Publication types