Background

After Hurricane Katrina in January 2006, a group of agencies from the greater New Orleans area that provided school-based or school-linked physical health, dental, behavioral health, and social services convened under their common concern for school-based health programs. This group became known as The School Health Initiatives Network (SHINe) and they began to formally collaborate together so that local school health leaders and agencies could coordinate their efforts, assess resources and needs, and be of support to one another in recovery of school health programs.

More specifically, the network convened to:

• Coordinate efforts in a city that is rebuilding infrastructure and services to welcome back a displaced populace.
• Work together to garner community, state, federal, and private grant support for school-based ands school-linked health care.
• Engage in community-driven and community-based research that helps to answer questions for our community about children, youth, and the services they need.
• Support each others work.

SHINe's collaborative efforts ultimately led to the award of the Kellogg grant and the formation of School Health Connection whose Steering Committee is comprised of many of the original members of SHINe.