Coordinated School Health Programs
A coordinated school health program (CSHP) model consists of eight interactive components. Schools by themselves cannot, and should not be expected to, address the nation's most serious health and social problems. Families, health care workers, the media, religious organizations, community organizations that serve youth, and young people themselves also must be systematically involved. However, schools could provide a critical facility in which many agencies might work together to maintain the well-being of young people.
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. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Parent/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.
Key Elements of Comprehensive Health Education
The following are key elements of comprehensive health education, which itself is part of an overall coordinated school health program.
* A documented, planned, and sequential program of health instruction for students in grades kindergarten through 12.
* A curriculum that addresses and integrates education about a range of categorical health problems and issues at developmentally appropriate ages.
* Activities that help young people develop the skills they need to avoid: tobacco use; dietary patterns that contribute to disease; sedentary lifestyle; sexual behaviors that result in HIV infection, other STDs and unintended pregnancy; alcohol and other drug use; and behaviors that result in unintentional and intentional injuries.
* Instruction provided for a prescribed amount of time at each grade level.
* Management and coordination by an education professional trained to implement the program.
* Instruction from teachers who are trained to teach the subject.
* Involvement of parents, health professionals, and other concerned community members.
* Periodic evaluation, updating, and improvement.
Sidebar
Product Roundup
Healthy Habits for Early Learners
Sara Jordan has been producing educational songs to help kids learn since 1990. Motivated by the needs of her own children and her students, the series now includes more than two dozen titles, including songs that teach health and safety, reading readiness, grammar, phonics, math, history, French and Spanish. Realizing that health, nutrition and safety are of utmost importance in the development of happy children and successful learners, Jordan produced an award winning CD/book kit Healthy Habits for Early Learners with songs teaching about nutrition, the food pyramid, dental hygiene, personal safety, fire safety and anatomy.
www.SongsThatTeach.com
Cardiac Science's Powerheart AED G3
The Powerheart AED G3 is Cardiac Science's flagship, feature-rich Automated External Defibrillator (AED). The Powerheart AED G3 features a simple, easy-to-use, one-button operation, with clear and instructive voice prompts to guide users through a rescue. New customer-friendly features include a lighter weight, redesigned form factor and the industry's first four-year, full replacement battery. RescueReady is Cardiac Science's patented, daily, weekly and monthly self tests that virtually assure first time, every time rescue performance. The G3 automatically tests all three critical components daily including the pre-connected electrodes (presence and function), IntelliSense lithium battery and system. The G3 now includes a partial energy test with the weekly self-test, and a full energy charge cycle with the monthly self-test.
www.cardiacscience.com
Safety Think
Safety Think is a company, headed up by former fire fighters and fire safety inspectors, devoted to helping keep people safe by offering innovative and unique safety products in a wide range of categories. The company is a primary distribution source for safety products that include but are not limited to child safety kits, emergency ladders, first aid kits, emergency LED flashlights, backup emergency lights, exit signs, fundraising items and a variety of other personal, home and professional safety products.
www.safetythink.com
SNAP Health Center from PSNI
SNAP Health Center is a modular school health management program. This means that you can start with the least expensive LOG module and gradually progress over the years to a full, networked, computerization of district records, including medication administration records. Each module includes a special program to download data from the school's administrative database. SNAP Health Center is designed by Professional Software for Nurses, Inc., which is a nurse-owned and operated business. PSNI is a market leader in school health management software worldwide with a staff of nurse informatics specialists and engineers. The company currently serves more than 2,300 schools and prides itself on providing friendly personalized service, creative flexibility and innovative solutions.
www.psni.biz
