Addressing Health Misinformation, Public Health Surveillance, and Infection Control Using Public School Nurses

Abstract

Infection prevention and control (IPC) is a critical component of public health, yet its application within U.S. K–12 schools remains fragmented, under-resourced, and insufficiently examined. Despite serving nearly 50 million students daily, public schools lack the standardized IPC infrastructure common in clinical environments, creating a significant and underrecognized public health vulnerability. This study addresses a critical gap in the literature by offering one of the first comprehensive examinations of school nurses’ strategic role in leading IPC efforts within educational settings. School nurses occupy a unique position at the intersection of healthcare delivery, education, and community engagement, yet their potential to influence disease prevention, health literacy, and illness surveillance remains largely untapped. Drawing on expert interviews and field-based insights, this research identifies context-specific, equity-centered strategies that enable school nurses to operationalize IPC more effectively, particularly in underserved communities. The study highlights how institutional constraints, misinformation, and inconsistent policies limit IPC effectiveness and contribute to disparities in student health outcomes. By centering school nurses as frontline public health practitioners, this research advances a novel, practice-informed framework for school-based IPC implementation. It fills a critical void in public health scholarship by reframing schools as active sites of disease prevention and positioning school nursing offices as essential nodes in community health resilience and surveillance systems.