Spotlight: COVID-19 prevention toolkits for schools

COVID-19 vaccination, testing, and contact tracing all play a role in efforts to help K–12 students, teachers, and staff stay healthy.

As part of its We Can Do This campaign, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has created a school communities toolkit to increase confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines.

The HHS toolkit contains a variety of resources that school district leaders, teachers, parents, and school supporters can download, print, and share at their convenience.

Strategies to mitigate the risk for COVID-19 transmission in schools play a key role in efforts to help students, teachers, and staff stay safe and healthy.

Project SafeSchools, an ongoing initiative led by the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health (JHCAIH), offers culturally appropriate materials that promote a layered approach to maintaining safe learning environments. Those materials include a COVID-19 school testing toolkit (PDF, 12.4 MB, 40 pp), which explains how to:

• Implement a testing program that appropriately meets a community’s needs
• Collect, manage, and distribute test results
• Conduct contact tracing

The Project SafeSchools toolkit also provides examples of school-based testing programs in action, a school testing checklist, a sample consent form, and more.