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

Comprehensive School Health

What is Comprehensive School Health?

CSH is an internationally recognized framework for supporting improvements in students' educational outcomes while addressing school health in a planned, integrated and holistic way.

For a short and simple explanation of CSH, please view the video below.

The CSH framework helps educators, health practitioners, school staff, students and others to work together to create an environment that makes their school the best place possible to learn, work and play. It is important to recognize that CSH does not require more work; it is just a way of working that becomes everyday practice.

Comprehensive School Health:

• recognizes that healthy young people learn better and achieve more;
• understands that schools can directly influence students' health and behaviours;
• encourages healthy lifestyle choices, and promotes students' health and well-being;
• incorporates health into all aspects of school and learning, acknowledging that health is
• more than just the absence of illness;
• links health and education issues and systems; and, needs the participation and support of families and the community at large.

Where does the idea of CSH come from?

The principles of CSH are drawn from two World Health Organization documents: the 1986 Ottawa Charter on Health Promotion, and the 1997 Jakarta Declaration. The Ottawa Charter was signed at the first-ever international conference for health promotion, which was held in Ottawa. The Jakarta Declaration, signed at a subsequent conference, reiterated the principles of the Ottawa Charter and emphasized the importance of combining multiple strategies for health promotion. Both documents speak to health promotion in general and have been used to guide the development of healthy schools programs.

The Ottawa Charter is particularly relevant as schools provide the ideal setting for encouraging participation, education and the development of personal skills and empowerment with a supportive environment. The "settings" approach to health promotion shifts the focus from the individual to the whole school community.

The Jakarta Declaration recognizes the need to develop partnerships between different sectors at all levels and describes key elements of health promotion, including:

• a setting approach that offers practical opportunities for implementing comprehensive strategies; and,
• active participation in health promotion action and decision making.

By incorporating CSH into everyday practice, healthy schools learn to plan, coordinate and deliver healthy school activities and strategies without adding to workload. As they review and reflect on their progress and improvements to students' health and learning over time, they can better plan future actions. Embracing CSH can make a significant difference in the health of students, the school, and the community as a whole.

CSH Pillars

CSH extends far beyond what happens in the classroom. It encompasses the whole school environment with actions in four distinct but inter-related areas:

	Social and physical environment - For example, healthy schools do not tolerate harassment or bullying, and pay close attention to ensuring school facilities and activities are safe.
	Teaching and learning - This includes both formal instruction, and informal learning, such as having teachers model healthy behaviours for students.
	Partnerships and services - These link the school to the broader community, enhancing the range of supports and opportunities available to students, parents, educators and others.
	Healthy school policy - This can encompass everything from guidelines for food sales to rules regarding conduct to frameworks for engaging community partners.

The Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health, which is a partnership of health and education departments from most of Canada's provinces and territories and the federal government, has developed a Comprehensive School Health Framework to assist schools and their partners in adopting the CSH approach. The Framework has also been endorsed by the World Health Organization.

What are the benefits of CSH?

Research consistently shows that health and education are connected¹. Children and youth cannot achieve their fullest potential as learners if their physical, mental, intellectual or emotional health is compromised.

Similarly, learning has a positive influence on students' health - both in the short- and long-term. For example, students who enjoy nutritious foods and regular physical activity will not only learn better, they're forming healthy habits that will help to support their well-being for a lifetime.

Research shows that a CSH approach can help schools achieve²:

• better learning outcomes for students;
• better health and well-being for students, educators and staff;
• more effective learning and teaching; and,
• a more cooperative and connected school environment.

The benefits also extend beyond the school and its students. Because CSH involves community partners and service providers who, in many cases, provide support for families and others, using the CSH approach can also encourage³:

• increased feelings of support from school;
• improved behavior and healthy choices at home and in the community;
• enhanced resources and opportunities;
• development of unique networks of services and programs for all; and,
• increased understanding of connections between curriculum and real life.

For more information on the benefits of CSH, please visit the research page of the HSP.

Who can participate?

Partnership is one of the most important aspects of Comprehensive School Health. To maximize the benefits, all members of the school community work together to make the school the best possible place to learn, work and play.

In addition to students, families, educators and school staff, partners in creating a healthy school may include any or all of the following:

• health promotion specialists;
• public health nurses;
• dietitians and community nutritionist;
• staff from local parks or recreation facilities;
• local businesses (e.g., donating sports equipment or sponsoring activities);
• local interest groups (e.g., garden club, chess club); and
• other community service providers that support and promote student and staff health and well-being.

http://www.healthyschoolsbc.ca/csh/comprehensive-school-health.aspx)
Friskila Damaris Silitonga SKep.NS.MPH

taken from (