School Health Institute for Education and Leadership Development

The SHIELD program continues with its aim to assist new school nurses in Massachusetts in completing mandated courses and meeting licensing requirements through Zoom, in-person, and online activities. In FY 2023-2024, the program offered 62 accredited and 16 nonaccredited activities, benefiting over 5,000 learners. Key activities included mandated courses for school nurse licensure, trainings for nurse leaders in districts with a Comprehensive School Health Services (CSHS) grant, an annual clinical update, and a new online cohort on leadership and management.

This year, SHIELD also updated the Foundations of School Nursing Practice course (a mandated course) with polling questions and a workbook, receiving positive feedback. For CSHS trainings, SHIELD collaborated with Wheelock College and the School of Public Health to guide nurses in developing equity-focused skills. About 90 nurses attended three Zoom sessions and one in-person session, working on leadership, health equity, and quality improvement projects.

Two new programs were also launched: an online cohort on leadership and management, and a podcast series on caring for children with special healthcare needs. The online cohort had 37 participants across two sessions, and the podcast received over 100 listens.

Lastly, we continue to perform quality reviews to ensure all resources and courses are up-to-date and ADA-compliant. This work has led to two courses receiving the Public Health Learning Network (PHLN) Quality Standards for Training Design and Delivery quality design and were added to the PHLN Library.  

In FY25, SHIELD plans to continue offering online and blended trainings, host an in-person CSHS meeting, open a curated learning library, develop content for working with students with special healthcare needs, and release a course based on the podcast series.

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