School Health Virtual Summit 2026
Leaders from across the country came together for the third annual School Health Virtual Summit, a 3-hour online event spotlighting how health systems and community organizations are transforming school-based care.
The Summit featured five speakers from leading health systems, FQHCs, and community health programs who shared how they are expanding access to care for children through innovative school partnerships, strengthening community engagement and continuity of care, and empowering clinicians to extend quality medical care beyond traditional settings.
The event concluded with an interactive roundtable discussion, where all speakers came together to answer audience questions and exchange insights on the future of school-based virtual care.
SPEAKERS
FEATURING
AGENDA
Introduction
Keynote address – Bringing Care to the Classroom: Mobile Healthcare Models for Rural Schools Lessons from the first SBHA-supported rural deployment
Building School Health Programs That Last: Choosing the Right Partners from Day One
From Then to Now: What Telehealth’s Evolution Has Meant for Schools and Clinicians
Closing Rural Care Gaps in Nebraska: How School Health Programs Expand Access for Kids
Roundtable
Where Health Meeting Learning: The Power of School-Based Care
Dr. Craig Glover shared a keynote on why “healthy students are better learners,” and how school-based health has become a critical access point for communities—especially in rural and underserved areas. He walked through what comprehensive school-based health can look like today, including integrated primary care and behavioral health, and emphasized that services alone don’t drive impact without strong care coordination and trusted relationships with families and schools.
Dr. Glover highlighted the growing role of mobile units and telehealth in extending care to more students and shared how FamilyCare Health Centers is operationalizing this work through medical/behavioral health mobile units that serve multiple schools, illustrating how coordinated, community-connected models can strengthen both health and education outcomes.
“School-based health centers are most effective when school leaders and governing boards recognize their educational value, not just their clinical role. When school-based health center goals are intentionally aligned with the priorities such as attendance, school engagement, and academic success, health services become a strategic asset rather than a standalone program.”
Achieving Better Together with Guilford Schools
Dr. John Jenkins shared lessons from Cone Health on how to build school health programs that can withstand change and grow over time. He emphasized the importance of aligning with district leadership—such as superintendents and school boards—rather than relying solely on individual school relationships, and discussed how shared goals, clear communication, and proactive problem-solving help protect programs as they scale. His talk highlighted why durable partnerships are essential to sustaining school health initiatives amid shifting priorities and leadership transitions.
“When we go into the schools, we understand their pain points to arrive around chronic absenteeism, overall attendance, instructional time, preserving that. Not only for the student who’s absent, but understanding when a student is absent, it has a dynamic effect on the entire class.”
Dr. John Jenkins
From Then to Now: What Telehealth’s Evolution Has Meant for Schools and Clinicians
Sheila Freed reflected on more than four decades in nursing to illustrate how dramatically care delivery has changed for clinicians working in rural and school-based settings. She shared firsthand experiences of practicing alone without backup and contrasted those moments with today’s virtual care environment, where real-time clinical and emotional support is available when it’s needed most. Her talk underscored why caring for clinicians themselves is essential to sustaining access to care, and how virtual school health programs are helping nurses feel supported, confident, and never truly alone.
“Telemedicine and that virtual care affects me deep in my bones. And the reason that does is because I have that lived experience of being the school nurse where I had five schools and I could never be in the right place at the right time. I was driving 100 miles a day just to take care of the procedures that I needed to take care of in my South Dakota schools.”
Expanding Access to High-Quality School Health Services Across the U.S.
Avel eCare, one of the largest and most comprehensive telemedicine network in the United States, partnered with TytoCare to transform how health services are delivered in schools. They were able to build a scalable, efficient, and deeply compassionate model that ensures students receive high-quality care where they are, without leaving school and without placing additional burdens on already-stretched school nurses and parents.
Sheila Freed
Closing Rural Care Gaps in Nebraska: How School Health Programs Expand Access for Kids
Stacy Zoucha shared a grounded look at the realities of delivering healthcare across rural Nebraska, where distance, workforce shortages, and limited local resources create significant access barriers for children and families. She explained how school-based health programs help overcome those challenges by bringing care directly into trusted community settings, reducing missed school time and travel burden. Stacy’s presentation highlighted why school health is uniquely positioned to support rural communities and why flexible, locally informed approaches are essential to making these programs work.
“We want to make sure that we’re improving school attendance. We want to make sure that we have immediate access to care for those families that we serve, reducing that financial burden of being able to do some quick virtual care visits without incurring a higher cost of a primary care office visit or potentially a specialist visit.”
