Health Curriculum

Why do we need a comprehensive health program in our schools?

The health choices and behavior patterns adopted during childhood are often maintained into and throughout adulthood. The health choices and behaviors children adopt therefore have implications not only for individuals' adult health and personal quality of life, but also for community health trends and associated health costs. It is also important to understand that influences on the development of children's health behaviors are multifaceted and complex. Fundamentally, children's health behaviors are influenced by a complex mixture of the behavioral patterns they witness and experience from a variety of people, in a variety of settings, over time.

As part of a comprehensive community response, schools have an important contribution to make in influencing the development of children's health behaviors. There are several factors unique to schools that make them an appropriate setting for health promotion. First, schools have an existing internal structure incorporating educational opportunities, staff trained in the provision of education, environmental services, various structures and supports that can reinforce health messages, and existing links to community-based agencies and support services. Health promotion can be cost-effectively incorporated into this pre-existing structure. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, schools have links to several influences on children's health, including family, peers, and the local community. This access puts schools in an ideal position to initiate interaction between key influences on children's health behaviors, to create supportive environments and reinforce messages from outside the school setting. Thirdly, schools have access to large numbers of children for extended periods. Children spend many of their developmental years in school, at a time when their growth and learning is rapidly increasing. This access provides schools with continuous interaction with a large number of children at a critical time in their development. Finally, schools are often directed by a state or national mandate to educate children in health. Therefore, there is policy support for schools to incorporate health into their core curriculum.

A school approach which comprehensively targets many influences of behavioral development over several years is likely to be more effective in initiating and reinforcing positive health behavior among students. Such a comprehensive approach has been acknowledged widely by school health professionals as an important method of implementing school health. Research literature suggests that schools which provide well developed school health promotion programs are more effective in encouraging children to adopt health enhancing behaviors and in reducing health compromising behaviors, than schools which provide curriculum-based