A partnership to create an anti-bullying program in two inner city schools: Evaluating academic and health outcomes

Bullying among elementary school age children includes physical, psychological and/or verbal behaviors that are repeated and involve an intention to harm. Bullying has particular relevance to health, academic outcomes, and school climate. Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, in partnership with Elev8,(an initiative of East Baltimore Development Inc), and two elementary public schools is conducting an anti-bullying program focused on 5th graders. The aims of the presentation are: 1) briefly describe the implementation of the program; 2) to measure the effectiveness of the anti-bullying program on outcomes (absenteeism, school and health self reports)among 5th grade students and to 3)describe teachers' perceptions of the relationship of bullying behavior to the academic success of children and school climate. The study is a quasi-experimental pretest, post test control group design with one school receiving the anti-bullying program and the comparison school receiving a delayed intervention. The measures include: Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire for Students and a self report health status instrument, CHIP-Child Edition. Focus groups were conducted with two groups of teachers. Absenteeism data will be collected from school records. The prevalence of bullying behaviors among fifth graders in one school (N=23) is 30% for those reporting being bullied once to several times per week and 17% reporting bullying others 2-3 times per month to several times per week. This presentation examines the relationship between bullying and academic issues, an important linkage in developing effective school based programs in partnerships between public health nurses, community organizations and educational institutions.