The fact is that members of the school health team have not been sufficiently prepared to negotiate the complex public policy and advocacy approaches necessary to fully incorporate the coordinated school health program into the mainstream. Here, professionals fail to communicate with any other member of their team. In school health for example, school physicians often fail to even communicate with school health educators or school food service personnel in the same school district or system. Here members of the team work in direct competition with each other. This is a stage where all members of the team actually share a few values, ideas and projects.
Colleagues attempt to facilitate their own efforts with the input of other team members.
Sometimes these efforts only consist of agreeing to stay out of each other's way. This is akin to Americans agreeing to drive on the right side of the street but each still stay in our own cars driving alone. The successful 21st Century school health program will, by necessity, be organized into regional networks of partnerships of hospitals, public health, HMOs, IPAs, PPOs, volunteer agencies, universities, school districts and local schools. Figure B illustrates how school health teams must focus on surrounding youth with a healthy, coordinated school health program, surrounding this school program with a totally healthy school, which in turn is surrounded by a healthy community. This has been attempted in one southern California community, the 92411 Zip Code.