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The Education-Health Link

All of us who work in schools know how important school nurses are. By providing health care, screening, and health education at school and by supporting a healthy school environment, school nurses make hugely important contributions to children’s academic success. But while the effects of health on education are widely understood, the profound effects that education has on health are rarely recognized. The facts, however, are pretty straightforward: People with more education live longer, healthier lives than people who have less education. Success in school helps lay the foundation for a lifetime of good health because healthy children are more likely to grow up to be healthy adults. So school nurses not only contribute to children’s immediate good health in school, but also to their long-term health as adults. I learned just how important education is to health while serving on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America. The Commission, which concluded its work last year, was charged with finding solutions outside the traditional medical care system for improving the nation’s health. We focused our search, not on hospitals and doctors’ offices, but on the homes and neighborhoods in which people live, the workplaces where they earn their livings, the playgrounds and parks where their children play, and— yes—the schools where children learn. Because so many health-related behaviors and patterns are established in childhood, the Commission devoted a great deal of attention to the role that schools play in the health of children. In sharing what we learned, I hope that school nurses will come away with a new understanding and appreciation of the lifelong impact of their work on children’s health—and with a few facts they can use to show how important nurses are. On average, college graduates can expect to live at least 5 years longer than people who haven’t graduated high school (see Figure 1). In fact, few medical interventions can match the impact of education on life expectancy. (An online education tool developed by the Commission allows users to see firsthand the links between education and mortality for states and most counties (see sidebar at the end of this article). In addition, people with less education are less likely to report being in very good health than those with more education. Parents’ education is linked with their children’s health as well, beginning early Figure 1 For Both Men and Women, More Education Typically Means Longer Life.a College graduates can expect to live at least 5 years longer than individuals who have not finished high school.