A Seneca Valley School District nurse won an award from the Highmark Foundation for her work on helping find best practices in school nursing.

Elizabeth Williams received an Advancing Excellence in School Nursing Award under the category of “transformation,” recognizing her efforts to share best practices and rethinking delivery of services to students.

Williams said school nursing is constantly changing, with new guidelines on how to best manage certain conditions coming out rapidly.

“Diabetes management and concussion management is where we’re still learning so much,” she said.

She said an example of sharing best practices was when she brought in a diabetic educator to speak to school nurses on what the best tools are to manage diabetic children.

Jeff Roberts, the district’s supervisor of gifted education and student services, said Williams’ work on understanding COVID-19 helped guide the district’s decision-making with respect to the virus.

“A lot of districts had plans from a decade ago related to H1N1, ... but we were preparing for COVID-19 back in January,” Roberts said. “Obviously things changed much more rapidly than much of us anticipated but Liz (Williams) and Jill Schulz (senior high school nurse) were part of our planning team from the beginning.”

Even while school is closed, Williams continues to work in the school buildings to ensure food service staff, who deliver meals to thousands of students, are healthy.

As part of the award, Williams is receiving $1,500 from Highmark for professional development or health-related programs at school. She said she’s considering bringing in speakers to talk to nurses or using the money to help fund educational programs on topics like vaping and drug and alcohol abuse.