Our Policy Priorities
The School-Based Health Alliance advocates for policies at the federal level that sustain and grow SBHCs, and also provides support to the school-based health care field to advance policies at the state and local level.
We advocate for and support:
- Federal support for high-quality comprehensive health care and mental health services to students at school-based health centers (SBHCs) across the country.
- Collaboration between health and education sectors to maximize resources, breakdown silos and remove policy and funding barriers to support student health.
- Resources and initiatives to increase the workforce of trained, licensed and certified school health professionals in order to meet the growing need for student health services.
- Robust funding and expanded flexibility for states within Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
- Expanding federal Community Health Center (CHC) funding for the nation’s health care safety net, which millions of low-income children and families rely for medical, behavioral, and oral health care. More than half of SBHCs across the nation are sponsored by federally qualified health center (FQHC)