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A large school district in Cincinnati partnered with their local health department and children’s hospital to develop mitigation procedures as children returned to school. These mitigation procedures successfully limited school-based spread of COVID-19 by combining best practices in rapid testing, contact tracing, and early isolation. Procedures were regularly revisited and updated in an iterative process to respond to new information and circumstances.

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the role systemic inequities play in health and health care. Health professions education and training should include guidance on how to address these inequities and how to have deep conversations within our learning institutions. This article outlines a novel framework for training health professionals and health professional educators to communicate about diversity, equity, and inclusion more effectively. The framework embraces a dialogue model called “medical improv.” Key elements of this model include examinations of identity and positionality, caretaking and team-making, and conversations with a skeptic.

Mask mandates in states beginning in 2020 had a significant impact on COVID-19-related hospitalizations. This study recommends revisiting mask mandates as new variants of COVID-19 spread and pressures return to the healthcare system.

This article discusses the work of Israel’s multidisciplinary academic group on children and coronavirus (MACC) to examine the role of children in viral transmission and assessing the necessity and consequences of restricted in-class education. This article focuses on the evolution, activities, policy inputs, and media profile of MACC, and discusses the role of academics in advocacy and activism in the midst of a global pandemic.

This article parallels the works of the multidisciplinary academic group on children and coronavirus (MACC) in Israel with a multidisciplinary team from John Hopkins’ own efforts to create data-driven solutions to minimize health and education inequities for children throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This project produced several outputs including a series of free, web-based, school-reopening modules for school and district administrators; a 2020-2021 School Reopening Tracker based on publicly available data sources; a Teacher & School Staff Vaccination COVID-19 Dashboard; and a COVID-19 Global Education Recovery Tracker. Links to all these resources are included in the article.

This guide is designed to help district leaders understand and respond to the specific teacher staffing gaps they’re facing, focusing on time-tested strategies that will make an immediate impact: ideas for covering absences, filling existing vacancies, and addressing chronic shortages exacerbated by the pandemic in key subject areas and in schools serving historically marginalized communities. It also offers advice on how districts can plan—in partnership with stakeholders inside and outside education—for longer-term changes to teacher pipelines, the employee value proposition for teachers, and the teacher role itself that will bring many more talented professionals into the classroom to support students in the critical years ahead.

This toolkit is an easy-to-use, practical resource that aims to help leaders make decisions and actionable plans amid these complicated questions. The planning framework that is the crux of this toolkit takes leaders through four key steps: Reground, Prioritize, Plan, and Connect. At each step, leaders are prompted with a series of key questions to help clarify their thinking and decision-making. These resources help leaders move from making decisions in a reactive, crisis-driven way to developing intentional short- and long-term actionable plans.

Youth nationwide face new intensified stressors like illness, death, social isolation, economic stress, food insecurity, family hardship, and increase domestic violence risk. These stressors are associated with outcomes like depression, behavioral problems, anxiety disorders, and worsened existing mental health conditions. School-based health centers (SBHCs) are a cost-effective health care delivery model that increases mental and behavioral health access and use. SBHC patients live in underserved communities and are at a greater risk for mental health issues. The qualitative data from this study highlight increased demand for mental health services and a lack of resources to meet this demand, resources to ensure universal telehealth technology access are needed to improve health care access for youth, and parental buy-in and support are crucial component of sustained care.

Data from the Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey (AMES) was used by CDC to assess 9th-12th grade student behaviors and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The prevalence of poor mental health and suicidality was high across students of all sex, sexual identity, and racial and ethnic groups; however, poor mental health, persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors were less prevalent among those who felt close to persons at school and were virtually connected with others during the pandemic. The mental health of youth might be improved via strategies that improve connections with others at home, in the community, and at school.

This toolkit was created by Willow House to provide information and tools to school staff as they support students going through the grieving process during the COVID-19 pandemic. This document includes information on common grief reactions, level of understanding of death and loss by age group, and ways to encourage and guide students through self-care and coping practices.