Our Work Did Not Start Yesterday
Long before this SCEC effort, PHIERS was working on the same basic problem: how do we put better health, support, opportunity, and accountability around school-aged children — especially the kids being left behind?
The names, technology, and moment have changed. The mission has not.
Independent Public Validation
PHIERS' earlier school-health work was not happening in isolation. Public officials recognized the value of bringing health, education, families, and community organizations together around children and their futures.
Maryland
Brown thanked PHIERS and its partners for coordinating the event with Prince George's County Public Schools and highlighted the importance of health, nutrition, wellness, education, and community partnership.
“Through coordinated events like the back to school health fair and by working together we'll build a better future for all of our children.”
Maryland
Van Hollen thanked PHIERS and its partners for making the back-to-school health fair possible and connected the work directly to children's health, academic success, nutrition, fitness, and healthy choices.
“It's vitally important to remember that good physical health is an important element of academic success.”
These videos document public recognition of PHIERS' earlier school-health and community work. They are presented as historical evidence of that work, not as endorsements of every current PHIERS initiative.
We Have Receipts
Why This Matters Now
SCEC knows the education fight. The Men's Healing Circle (MHC) was asked to help lead because of the work and trust it has built in the community. Men Accountable Project (MAP) strengthens that commitment to service, participation, and accountability.
PHIERS brings more than a decade of work around the same whole-student mission: school-based health, registered nurses, coordinated interventions, mentoring, community partnerships, family support, and measurable outcomes.
The goal is not to invent another program. It is to reconnect the people, expertise, resources, and accountability needed to address the whole student — mind, body, and spirit.
This is unfinished work whose time has come again.
The need didn't disappear. The funding did.
School-nurse staffing depended heavily on discretionary funding. As districts moved away from funding multiple dedicated RN placements and increasingly stretched individual nurses across multiple schools, the funding opportunity supporting the model disappeared.
PHIERS didn't stop believing in school-based health. The financial path for implementing that model went away.
Today gives us a path to finish the work: organize the community, document what people want through the petition and survey, reconnect proven partners and approaches, rebuild school-based health and community support capacity, follow the money and results, and create enough public leverage to get near-term commitments from the people responsible for delivering them.
Bring the Team Back Together
PHIERS previously worked with the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) while developing school-based health and community-support solutions.
As this effort moves forward, one of our goals is to re-engage NASN and school nurses — alongside educators, families, mentors, healthcare partners, community organizations, and public officials — around the needs of the whole student.
Assess the need. Coordinate the response. Measure what changed. Improve what does not work.
Mind. Body. Spirit. One student. One community. One coordinated response.
See It For Yourself
Don't take our word for it. Check the timestamps. These videos are more than a decade old. PHIERS was already working on school-based health, school nurses, whole-child support, community partnerships, and better outcomes for school-aged children.
This isn't a new interest. It's unfinished work.
Community outreach designed to connect families with practical health and support resources.
A whole-child model connecting health, mentoring, enrichment, families, schools, and community organizations.
Put trusted health support closer to the children who need it, and coordinate the people around them.
The Opportunity
The petition and survey tell us what Sacramento wants. SCEC brings the education mission. MHC and MAP bring people. PHIERS brings a tested direction for coordinated community support — and a way to keep score.
Historical PHIERS materials document earlier school-health, community-support, Camp Fit, and coordinated-care work. They are presented as a record of the direction and work pursued at the time, not as a claim that every past partnership remains active today.