Exploring school climate spillover effects of a school-based health center adolescent relationship abuse intervention

ABSTRACT The growing number of School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs), along with expanding SBHC interventions and increasing evidence of their effectiveness, presents an unprecedented opportunity to examine their broader impacts on the overall school environment. Recognizing the pivotal interplay between health and education, it is important to explore whether SBHC interventions have the potential to affect broader school climate. In this paper, we examined the spillover effects of an SBHC adolescent relationship abuse (ARA) intervention on school climate. We used secondary data to assess the spillover effects of a cluster randomized controlled trial of SBHC-based ARA intervention in California high schools. Data from the staff-reported California School Climate Survey (CSCS) was analyzed to compare intervention and control groups before and after the intervention; we also did differences-in-differences analyses. The CSCS staff sample was 216 pre-intervention and 187 post-intervention. The SBHC ARA intervention had some benefits for staff-reported school climate, including improved perceived school safety and case-by-case approach to school discipline. We encourage further research and rigorous evaluations with larger samples of the potential spillover effects of SBHC interventions on school climate and related student outcomes.