This piece is a research brief by authors Alison Klebanoff Cohen, and S. Leonard Syme. Cohen is a research assistant at UC Berkley, while Syme is a professor of epidemiology and community health. In this text, the authors are exploring the ways in which education and health come together. They do this by looking at different levels of education, such as elementary, middle school, high school, and even college.
Through their review of various texts, the authors found that elementary school is extremely important to a person’s development, both in the classroom and out. They also found that being in school programs such as Head Start can result in crucial improvement of a person’s literacy. Additionally, they found that smaller class sizes positively improve students’ learning – which I could have told you myself! I find it interesting how they also found that having a bachelor’s degree is associated with better health outcomes. It’s interesting because I’ve never thought about it that way even though I know it’s true. Having a bachelor’s degree means better job prospects and more money, which means a person is more likely to have good health care services and not live in an urban area which often results in less sanitary living conditions.
Overall, this research brief was interesting and well done. I think that the format of it is very good, but I wish that they would have looked at poor students who do not have access to programs such as Head Start, and how not having that impacts their health.