Abstract
BackgroundMost European countries have implemented a form of school health services (SHS) to provide young children and adolescents with various types of healthcare. No estimations on SHS expenditure for European countries have been published until now. We estimated SHS workforce expenditure in Europe, expected to serve as the main driver of school healthcare costs.MethodsUsing two networks of experts on healthcare provision for children we contacted various country representatives to provide data on the number of professionals working in SHS and salaries. These data were used, together with publicly available data, to estimate annual SHS workforce expenditure on the national level.ResultsWe received sufficient data for five European countries, and estimated the SHS workforce expenditure. Nurses were the most widely reported professionals working in this field, followed by doctors and psychologists. Our SHS expenditure estimations ranged from €43,000 for Estonia to €195,300 in Norway (per 1000 pupils). For Norway, Estonia, Finland and Iceland, school nurses were the main drivers of SHS expenditure, mainly due to their large numbers, while in Austria, school doctors played the largest role in SHS expenditure.ConclusionsWe estimated the spending on SHS workforce for five European countries, which comprises relatively minor parts of total healthcare spending (0.16 to 0.69%). Many questions regarding SHS spending in Europe remain, due to a general lack of data on national levels.
Highlights
Most European countries have implemented a form of school health services (SHS) to provide young children and adolescents with various types of healthcare
Questionnaire Building on the country agent network initiated for Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) [7] and the economic data collected in work package 3 of the project [6, 8], we sent out a questionnaire by email, focusing on the workforce and gross salary of the SHS workforce
External data sources From the MOCHA project, we knew which SHS professionals were working in which countries: if no numbers were reported in the questionnaire, but the professionals were reported to be working in SHS in previous research [6, 8], we considered data to be missing
Summary
Most European countries have implemented a form of school health services (SHS) to provide young children and adolescents with various types of healthcare. It is generally considered that lifetime health outcomes and socioeconomic status are largely determined by an appropriate and stable environment at the start of life [3] This highlights the importance for society to invest in health equity in life’s early stages, that may very well result in rewards as a result of increased health and socioeconomic status. SHS comprised screenings, with a focus on height and weight, as well as vision, hearing and dental van der Pol et al BMC Health Services Research (2020) 20:206 tests. Another focus in most countries was mental health promotion. Education was a key area within SHS in many countries as well, such as sex education and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle [6]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
