Factors affecting school health follow-up.

Abstract

THIS paper reports an investigation of I the relationship of family and social factors to the effectiveness of follow-up of school health 'appraisals. Family perceptions, values, attitudes, and beliefs are considered as they influence the families' behavior in response to referrals from the school. The need to consider school health in the general context of medical care resources of the community rather than as a thing apart stimulated our interest in these user-oriented factors. Viewed critically, most school health research has been descriptive-and self-supportive-and little has been done to examine the problems of providing health care in the schools with an eye to designing services and programs on the basis of predictable patterns of health behavior. Since the turn of the century in this country there has been an awareness that the school is not only a factor but a force, an active contributor to the health of our population. The scope and character of this force appears to have emerged in large measure as a consequence of a defaulted public need, an administrative or logistical convenience, and professional judgments of what is Lowell S. Levin, Ed.D., M.P.H., F.A.P.H.A.; and