Health Work in the Public Schools

Team work between physician and nurse in Cleveland.
This report on Health Work in the Public Schools is one of the 25 sections of the report of the Educational Survey of Cleveland conducted by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation in 1915. Twenty-three of these sections will be published as separate monographs. In addition there will be a larger volume giving a summary of the findings and recommendations relating to the regular work of the public schools, and a second similar volume giving the summary of those sections relating to industrial education. Copies of all these publications may be obtained from the Cleveland Foundation. They may also be obtained from the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City. A complete list will be found in the back of this volume, together with prices.

Cleveland employs 16 physicians, one oculist, and 27 nurses to take charge of the health of her school children. The city spends $36,000 a year on salaries and supplies for these people. There are 86 school dispensaries and clinics. Cleveland is making this heavy investment because she finds it pays.
Medical inspection is an extension of the activities of the school in which the educator and the physician join hands to insure for each child such conditions of health and vitality as will best enable him to take full advantage of the free education offered by the state. Its object is to better health conditions among school children, safeguard them from disease, and render them healthier, happier, and more vigorous. It is founded upon a recognition of the intimate relationship between the physical and mental conditions of the children, and the consequent dependence of education on health conditions.
In Cleveland, the value of medical inspection was recognized while the movement was still in its infancy in America. Here, as elsewhere, this sudden recognition of the imperative necessity for safeguarding the physical welfare of school children grew out of the discovery that compulsory education under modern city conditions meant compulsory disease.