SC Healthy Schools PowerPoints 

• Comprehensive Health Education
• Healthy Schools Award Application
• Healthy Schools Grants
• Healthy Schools Helpful Resources
• Healthy Schools Guidance and Notices
• Healthy Schools Training
• Children's Oral Health Project
• Youth Risk Behavior Survey
• SC District CHE Coordinators
• School Health Index

1. Health Education: A planned, sequential, K-12 curriculum that addresses the physical, mental, emotional and social dimensions of health. The curriculum is designed to motivate and assist students to maintain and improve their health, prevent disease, and reduce health-related risk behaviors. It allows students to develop and demonstrate increasingly sophisticated health-related knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices. The comprehensive health education curriculum includes a variety of topics such as personal health, family health, community health, consumer health, environmental health, sexuality education, mental and emotional health, injury prevention and safety, nutrition, prevention and control of disease, and substance use and abuse. Qualified, trained teachers provide health education.
   
    
2. Physical Education: A planned, sequential K-12 curriculum that provides cognitive content and learning experiences in a variety of activity areas such as basic movement skills; physical fitness; rhythms and dance; games; team, dual, and individual sports; tumbling and gymnastics; and aquatics. Quality physical education should promote, through a variety of planned physical activities, each student's optimum physical, mental, emotional, and social development, and should promote activities and sports that all students enjoy and can pursue throughout their lives. Qualified, trained teachers teach physical activity.
   
    
3. Health Services: Services provided for students to appraise, protect, and promote health. These services are designed to ensure access or referral to primary health care services or both, foster appropriate use of primary health care services, prevent and control communicable disease and other health problems, provide emergency care for illness or injury, promote and provide optimum sanitary conditions for a safe school facility and school environment, and provide educational and counseling opportunities for promoting and maintaining individual, family, and community health. Qualified professionals such as physicians, nurses, dentists, health educators, and other allied health personnel provide these services.
   
    
4. Nutrition Services: Access to a variety of nutritious and appealing meals that accommodate the health and nutrition needs of all students. School nutrition programs reflect the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans and other criteria to achieve nutrition integrity. The school nutrition services offer students a learning laboratory for classroom nutrition and health education, and serve as a resource for linkages with nutrition-related community services. Qualified child nutrition professionals provide these services.
   
    
5. Counseling and Psychological Services: Services provided to improve students' mental, emotional, and social health. These services include individual and group assessments, interventions, and referrals. Organizational assessment and consultation skills of counselors and psychologists contribute not only to the health of students but also to the health of the school environment. Professionals such as certified school counselors, psychologists, and social workers provide these services.
   
    
6. Healthy School Environment: The physical and aesthetic surroundings and the psychosocial climate and culture of the school. Factors that influence the physical environment include the school building and the area surrounding it, any biological or chemical agents that are detrimental to health, and physical conditions such as temperature, noise, and lighting. The psychological environment includes the physical, emotional, and social conditions that affect the well-being of students and staff.
   
    
7. Health Promotion for Staff: Opportunities for school staff to improve their health status through activities such as health assessments, health education and health-related fitness activities. These opportunities encourage school staff to pursue a healthy lifestyle that contributes to their improved health status, improved morale, and a greater personal commitment to the school's overall coordinated health program. This personal commitment often transfers into greater commitment to the health of students and creates positive role modeling. Health promotion activities have improved productivity, decreased absenteeism, and reduced health insurance costs.
   
    
8. Family/Community Involvement: An integrated school, parent, and community approach for enhancing the health and well-being of students. School health advisory councils, coalitions, and broadly based constituencies for school health can build support for school health program efforts. Schools actively solicit parent involvement and engage community resources and services to respond more effectively to the health-related needs of students.
    

Six Critical Health Behaviors

1. Alcohol & Drug Use
   Alcohol abuse is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States (4% of the total deaths in 2000), and is a factor in approximately 41% of all deaths from motor vehicle crashes.
    
2. Injury & Violence (including suicide)
   Injury and violence is the leading cause of death among youth aged 10-24 years: motor vehicle crashes (37% of all deaths), all other unintentional injuries (16%), homicide (18%), and suicide (13%).
    
3. Tobacco Use
   Every day about 4,000 American youth aged 12–17 years try their first cigarette. It is estimated that smoking causes 435,000 deaths each year in the United States.
    
4. Nutrition
   Almost 80% of young people do not eat the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables. Nearly 9 million youth in the United States aged 6–19 years are overweight.
    
5. Physical Activity
   Participation in physical activity declines as children get older. Overall, in 2005, 36% of 9-12 graders had participated in at least 60 minutes per day of physical activity. Nearly 37% of 9th graders, but only 33% of 12th graders, participated in 60 minutes of physical activity on a regular basis.
    
6. Sexual Risk Behaviors
   Each year, there are approximately 19 million new STD infections in the United States, and almost half of them are among youth aged 15 to 24. Thirty-four percent of young women become pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20.

These behaviors usually are established during childhood, persist into adulthood, are inter-related, and are preventable. In addition to causing serious health problems, these behaviors also contribute to the educational and social problems that confront the nation, including failure to complete high school, unemployment, and crime.

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Other Important Health Topics

Asthma
On average, in a classroom of 30 children, about three are likely to have asthma. Five million school-aged children and youth are reported to currently have asthma, and asthma is one of the leading causes of school absenteeism.

Crisis Preparedness & Response
Preparation is the responsibility of every school, community, and state. Should an event or threat occur or be suspected, every staff member should know how to respond based on protocols or community-based plans established in advance in collaboration with public health and first responder agencies.

Food Safety
Educating students, families, and school staff on simple but effective food safety measures can help prevent the approximately 76 million cases of foodborne illness that are reported in the United States annually, resulting in an average of 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. Food safety is especially important in schools, because each day more than 27 million children get their lunch through the National School Lunch Program. Furthermore, educating students in school about food safety can help them build good food safety habits that last a lifetime.

Mental Health
Mental health is an under-recognized serious health problem. An estimated 21% of young people in the United States between the ages 9 and 17 have diagnosable emotional or behavioral health disorders, but less than a third get help for these problems.

Overweight
The prevalence of overweight among children ages 6 to 11 has more than doubled in the past 20 years, going from 7% in 1980 to 19% in 2004. Several chronic disease risk factors are related to childhood overweight and obesity, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Additionally, overweight young people have a great likelihood of becoming overweight adults and developing diseases associated with adulthood, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Skin Cancer
The most common form of cancer in the United States is skin cancer. Skin cancer is a preventable disease, as exposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays appears to be the most important environmental factor. Schools are in a good position to encourage children to develop sun protection habits.

Related Resources

Registries of Effective Programs lists federally-sponsored registries that include programs with evidence of effectiveness in reducing youth risk behaviors.

Steps to a HealthierUS is an initiative from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that advances the HealthierUS goal of helping Americans live longer, better, and healthier lives. The Steps cooperative agreement program funds 40 communities nationwide to implement school and community programs to increase physical activity and healthy eating; reduce obesity, diabetes, and tobacco use; and better manage asthma.