Challenges in keeping the schools open. Let us try a different approach this time
During the latter half of 2021, a wave of hopefulness finally struck the world. Public health models started indicating the pandemic may be coming to an end. However, shortly after, new challenges started to appear on the horizon. With the rise of COVID-19 variants, pandemic burnout, and vaccine hesitancy, the current epidemiological circumstances indicate anything but the end of this pandemic. Omicron, the most recent and widespread COVID-19 variant, is not the first variant that is complicating our response to the pandemic. Recent reports of more variants arising globally, including Flurona in Israel and IHU in France, are reiterating one notion: Omicron is not the last variant we will see.
Among the many continued disruptions to our way of life, schools and universities are struggling to maintain in-person classes. This inability to sustain a safe environment for learning can have profound consequences in both the short and long term. There is a strong call to foster a safe and healthy environment for students while achieving the emotional, psychological, and educational benefits of in-person learning. Without longevity for in-person teaching, students continue to suffer from a number of negative mental health outcomes. Additionally, students have been dropping out of school at an unprecedented rate. With a continued understanding that COVID-19 is not going to vanish off the surface of the earth, we need better ways to adapt in-person teaching to be safe in the presence of the virus.
Switching From Reactive to Proactive
Adolescents and children are among the latest groups to get approved for the vaccine and continue to be a population with one of the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy. Consequently, with some schools opening amidst the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, we may be on the verge of a new public health disaster. Kids will infect their families, hence putting families’ health at risk. In turn, this could disrupt the workplace, which has already been struggling with short staffing around the country. Additionally, and given the current vaccination rates, kids can flood the healthcare systems, including pediatric practices that will be over-occupied. Accordingly, this will disrupt care for many other children that need treatment for other more acute conditions that are unrelated to COVID-19. More importantly, having more COVID-19 circulating among a concentrated group of people (e.g., kids in schooling systems) will create more opportunities for variants to arise. This will further complicate our battle with the pandemic.
With different waves of COVID-19 variants over the past year, the response has been reactive. Simply put, we wait for the wave to hit before enabling a “damage control” response. Besides the adverse number of consequences that infections within the school systems can have on society, a major consequence, often overlooked, continues to be the disruption of a safe and sustained environment for children to be educated. Science assures that variants will continue to rise until everyone can access a vaccine. Examples from countries with full access to vaccines, such as Israel, exemplify those certain levels of protective measures are still necessary if the virus is still circulating. Hence, it is evident that we need a better approach to protect our schooling systems. A pattern of school closures and disruption of the educational process is becoming counterintuitive and has the potential to bring more harm to society in the long run. In many cases, it is causing more damage than benefit and the compromise for our public health safety is becoming too large. Consequently, we need to rely on new tools and protocols that are adaptive to changing epidemiological conditions to control Omicron at the current time, as well as future waves arising from new variants.
Building Resiliency To Enable In-Person Learning
Building resiliency in schools is the best approach to protect students from public health emergencies and mental health and other crises. Being proactive with the right solution will aid in building resiliency, allowing schools to remain open if proper protocols are implemented, regardless of the changing epidemiology landscape. However, the effort by schools is hampered due to the following:
Lack of collaboration between students, public health, and families to implement policies.
Lack of tools to assess and address the individualized needs of each student.
Lack of data from schools and public health to understand the issues and to build effective policies.
The presence of manual and antiquated systems (e.g., collecting and reporting data), resulting in diverting resources away from addressing health issues.
Disconnected tools, websites, spreadsheets, school management, LMS and other systems that are often not adequately secured and do not provide the deep insights required to make decisions.
To better build resiliency, technology can be utilized to undertake active monitoring, surveillance, compliance, and communication. In turn, this can accelerate safe and rapid recovery from public health crises. For instance, a single integrated platform that can act as a command center and provide actionable insights from data collected to build effective policies can aid in making evidence-based decisions to protect students and sustain in-person learning. With current developments in vaccination and testing techniques, obtaining immunization and testing records in real-time can have profound benefits in avoiding unnecessary closures. Overall, adequate utilization of such solutions will also free up existing resources to actively manage students’ health and safety needs.
It is time to change our ways and utilize technology to its fullest potential. To build resiliency, collaboration using novel techniques is necessary. Augmenting efforts by implementing technology-based solutions can enable real-time collaboration between students, families, and public health to implement and measure policies, reduce costs, and improve timely sharing of data with public health. The achievable outcome is one that we all want: building resiliency by empowering students with accurate and timely information related to policies, health, and other interventions addressing individual needs. It is of utmost importance to empower students with evidence-based health education and engagement to help in the management and prevention of disease, mental health crises, and to promote general wellness initiatives.
Visit https://www.aztute.com/education to learn how our public health management solution for schools helps keep students safe and healthy while dealing with physical and mental health crises. Our solution also helps keep students in classrooms, where they receive the emotional, psychological, and educational benefits of in-person learning.
Resources
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/587809-omicron-sending-children-to-hospital-in-record-numbers
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/is-covid-endemic/
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html
https://www.aztute.com/whats-new/youth-mental-health-crisis-covid-19
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/10/children-vaccines-hesitancy-inequity