Data Fixes Needed to Sustain the School Nurse Specialty

“What is the return on investment?” is a question leaders and other decision-makers frequently ask about public health nurses (PHNs), including school nurses. With ongoing limitations in public health funding, PHNs are often the first to be at risk of being laid off or having their position eliminated due to being viewed as “expensive,” difficult to recruit, and, at times, a “nice to have, but not essential” specialty in the public health workforce. Indeed, the PHN workforce is shrinking rapidly overall and as a percent of the public health workforce, with recent data showing that in 2022 they encompassed only 12.7% of the governmental public health workforce, down from 20.5% in 2008.