Community Schools: a Public Health Opportunity to Reverse Urban Cycles of Disadvantage

Community schools link students, families, and communities to educate children and strengthen neighborhoods. They have become a popular model for education in many US cities in part because they build on community assets and address multiple determinants of educational disadvantage. Since community schools seek to have an impact on populations, not just the children enrolled, they provide an opportunity to improve community health. Community schools influence the health and education of neighborhood residents though three pathways: building trust, establishing norms, and linking people to networks and services. Through such services as school-based health centers, nutrition education, family mental health counseling, violence prevention, and sexuality education, these schools build on the multiple reciprocal relationships between health and education. By developing closer ties between community schools and neighborhood health programs, public health professionals can help to mobilize a powerful new resource for reducing the health and educational inequalities that now characterize US cities. We suggest an agenda for research, practice, and policy that can build the evidence needed to guide such a strategy.