Coordinated School Health

The Case for Coordinated School Health

Coordinated school health (CSH) is recommended by CDC as a strategy for improving students' health and learning in our nation’s schools.

Why Schools?

The healthy development of children and adolescents is influenced by many societal institutions. After the family, the school is the primary institution responsible for the development of young people in the United States.

·         Schools have direct contact with more than 95 percent of our nation’s young people aged 5–17 years, for about 6 hours a day, and for up to 13 critical years of their social, psychological, physical, and intellectual development.

·         Schools play an important role in improving students’ health and social outcomes, as well as promoting academic success.

Why School Health?

The health of young people is strongly linked to their academic success, and the academic success of youth is strongly linked with their health. Thus, helping students stay healthy is a fundamental part of the mission of schools. After all, schools cannot achieve their primary mission of education if students and staff are not healthy.

·         Health-related factors, such as hunger, chronic illness, or physical and emotional abuse, can lead to poor school performance.¹

·         Health-risk behaviors such as substance use, violence, and physical inactivity are consistently linked to academic failure and often affect students' school attendance, grades, test scores, and ability to pay attention in class.^2-4

The good news is that school health programs and policies may be one of the most efficient means to prevent or reduce risk behaviors and prevent serious health problems among students.⁵Effective school health policies and programs may also help close the educational achievement gap.⁶

Why Coordinate School Health?

School health programs and policies in the United States have resulted, in large part, from a wide variety of federal, state and local mandates, regulations, initiatives, and funding streams. The result, in many schools, is a “patchwork” of policies and programs with differing standards, requirements, and populations to be served. In addition, the professionals who oversee the different pieces of the patchwork come from multiple disciplines: education, nursing, social work, psychology, nutrition, and school administration, each bringing specialized expertise, training, and approaches.

Coordinating the many parts of school health into a systematic approach can enable schools to

·         Eliminate gaps and reduce redundancies across the many initiatives and funding streams

·         Build partnerships and teamwork among school health and education professionals in the school

·         Build collaboration and enhance communication among public health, school health, and other education and health professionals in the community

·         Focus efforts on helping students engage in protective, health-enhancing behaviors and avoid risk behaviors

Coordinated School Health

SHC utilizes the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Coordinated School Health (CSH) guidelines as a framework for developing its school wellness program. This framework calls for an organized approach that recognizes that school health is multifaceted through eight interrelated components:

·         Healthy School Environment: The physical, emotional, and social climate and culture of the school supports and enhances the health of students, staff and families. School policies address the health of students along with academics. The school environment includes the physical, emotional, and social conditions that affect the well-being of students and staff.

·         Health Education: A comprehensive health curriculum that addresses the physical, mental, emotional and social dimensions of health. The curriculum provides knowledge and skills that help students maintain and improve their health, prevent disease, and reduce health-related risk behaviors. The curriculum includes a variety of topics such as personal and family health, community health, environmental health, sexuality, mental and emotional health, injury prevention and safety, nutrition, disease prevention and control, and substance use and abuse.

·         Physical Education: A comprehensive, sequential curriculum that provides learning experiences in a variety of activity areas. 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.

·         Health Services: Services are provided for students to appraise, protect, and promote health. These services are designed to ensure access or referral to primary health care services, 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 conditions for a safe school facility and school environment, and provide educational and counseling opportunities for promoting and maintaining health.

·         Nutrition Services: Access to a variety of nutritious, appealing and affordable meals that accommodate the health and nutrition needs of all students. School nutrition programs should meet or exceed the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The school nutrition services are designed to maximize each child’s health and education potential, and provide an environment that promotes health eating habits for all children.

·         Counseling and Psychological Services: Services are provided to improve students' mental, emotional, and social health; this includes individual and group assessments, interventions, and referrals. School counselors, social workers and psychologists contribute not only to the health of students but also to the health of the school environment. Prevention services facilitate positive learning and healthy behavior, and enhance healthy child and adolescent development.

·         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.

·         Family and Community Involvement: An integrated school, parent, and community approach for enhancing the health and well-being of students. School health advisory committees, 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.

Friskila Damaris Silitonga SKep. NS.MPH