Students bring more than just backpacks and school supplies into the classroom. They often carry the weight of physical and mental health needs, both of which impact how they learn and perform academically. When Tennessee schools support student health through provided services, the potential health-related barriers to student success can be reduced. However, until now, we have had little knowledge of the overall landscape of the health resources and services provided by Tennessee’s K-12 schools.
Providing us with this missing data, researchers at Vanderbilt University and Johns Hopkins University collected, analyzed, and mapped the health services offered by Tennessee school districts over the last five years. Excitingly, the research team made their work public through a new dashboard: Children’s Health Resources and Services in Tennessee: A Tool for Exploring and Connecting. School-based health providers, leaders, and policymakers should leverage this tool to understand not only the status of student health services in their districts but also to strategically benchmark themselves among similar districts to improve services.
Insight #1: 75% of Tennessee school districts are represented on the dashboard, and the districts represented are reflective of the state’s regional diversity.
Tennessee is home to 147 school districts and serves nearly a million students. Over half of Tennessee school districts are found in rural communities, with the remainder being split among the state’s cities, towns, and suburbs. Researchers captured data from 111 school districts in Tennessee, producing a sample that aligns closely with the spectrum of communities found across our state.
Within Tennessee’s three grand divisions, there are eight CORE regions that differ in their levels of rurality and urbanicity. This dashboard acknowledges the diversity of communities within Tennessee’s grand divisions, featuring strong representation from each of our state’s CORE regions.
Coupled with a detailed profile of each participating district’s characteristics and health services, the number of participating districts unlocks the ability to leverage this dashboard for benchmarking not only against nearby districts but against districts with similar characteristics across the state.
Insight #2: Over half of Tennessee school districts in distressed or at-risk Tennessee counties provide physical and mental health services.
Student groups who face economic challenges are more likely to struggle academically. The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) prepares an index for every county in the United States, designating economic status through a composite measure of each county’s three-year average unemployment rate, per capita market income, and poverty rate. According to the ARC’s index, 35% of school districts are located in economically distressed counties. When ARC data are leveraged in conjunction with the health services dashboard, over half of Tennessee districts considered distressed or at-risk are found to provide students with direct access to health care and mental health services, underscoring the continued need for these services. Regardless of whether a district occupies an economically distressed county, districts are more likely to provide mental and behavioral health services than physical health services.
Insight #3: Rural Tennessee districts are less likely to directly provide student health services.
Rural school districts in Tennessee face greater challenges due to isolation and often smaller tax bases, and nearly 55% of Tennessee’s school districts are found in rural counties. It is positive that many rural school districts are providing physical health services (approximately 77% of rural districts), as well as some kind of mental health support (approximately 69% of rural districts). However, lower rates of offered services than nonrural peers signal an opportunity to more directly support student health.
For more students to achieve economic independence, Tennessee must continue supporting students’ mental and physical health.
In April of 2024, SCORE and close partners pulled leaders together for the inaugural Connecting the Dots event, Mental Health and Student Success in Tennessee. Today, this work continues as more voices contribute to an ongoing statewide dialogue. Thanks to researchers, Tennessee districts can now benchmark their strategies for supporting student health and identify opportunities to improve the services provided to students.
The ability for students to take advantage of economic opportunity is a product of a strong education system. We know that healthier students thrive academically more often than their less healthy peers. Acknowledging that mental and physical health can influence a student's trajectory through education to career, it is paramount that our state continues to be attuned to emerging data and research around access to and availability of critical health services.
The data used to develop these insights are publicly available and provide a greater amount of detail than is summarized here. We hope you will visit the dashboard and the research team’s website and ask how their work can inform your efforts to advance the health — and, by extension, economic opportunity — of Tennessee students.