{"doi":"10.1016/j.puhip.2025.100719","title":"A comprehensive outside-of-school intervention to promote school attendance and achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic","abstract":"Objectives: School absenteeism predicts poor academic achievement and long-term health inequities. Chronic absenteeism increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and both student attendance and achievement disparities widened. This study examined the association between participation in an intensive outside-of-school intervention, Student U, and school absenteeism, as well as changes in attendee academic performance during the pandemic. Study design: Observational cohort study. Methods: A simple linear regression model was performed testing the association between Student U attendance and schools absences. Paired t-tests and a global test for overall improvement using generalized estimating equations were performed to examine changes in pre- and post-test academic performance. Results: The sample included 65 students (Hispanic/Latino, 56.9 %; Non-Hispanic Black/African American, 33.8 %; 80.0 % first-generation college-bound). For every day a 7th-grade student attended Student U, school absences decreased by 0.14 days (p = 0.02). Mean differences in overall improvement for 7th- and 10th-grade student test scores were 23.65 (95 % CI: 19.91, 27.39; p < 0.001) and 22.12 (95 % CI: 15.67, 28.58; p < 0.001), respectively. Conclusions: We demonstrated the association between participation in Student U and lower school absenteeism, as well as improved academic performance across multiple subjects for underserved youth. Findings reinforce the potential for comprehensive and intensive outside-of-school programs to support underserved youth and mitigate inequities following pandemics and other public health emergencies.","journal":"Public Health in Practice","year":2025,"id":537606,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9576,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1423827,"name":"Raha Manyara","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1102457,"name":"Tyler R. Erickson","orcid":"0009-0007-9724-7032","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":832125,"name":"Angel Chen","orcid":"0000-0003-3515-6710","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1346749,"name":"A. Peters","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":791335,"name":"Ashley Blakemore","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1423398,"name":"E. Muuro Maina","orcid":"0009-0008-5689-7503","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1423828,"name":"Cynthia Vargas","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":319873,"name":"Kanecia O. Zimmerman","orcid":"0000-0003-3748-6932","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":897177,"name":"Emiliano D’Agostino","orcid":"0000-0003-0468-4836","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":15,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:52:12.997494Z","pmid":"41568248","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}