PED 316:

COORDINATED SCHOOL HEALTH PROGRAM

MODULE 1
OVERVIEW, EVOLUTION AND IMPORTANCE OF
SCHOOL HEALTH PROGRAM

Introduction

Coordinated School Health Program is intended to improve students’ health and

their capacity to learn through the support of families, communities and schools working
together. This topic is very important because it develop your wholesome personality
focuses on the mental, physical, social and spiritual aspects. It also provides a system
designed to address the needs of the whole child by effectively connecting health with
education. There is a big impact of poor health to education, because poor health
cause educational setbacks and interfere with schooling. 
Physical and mental functioning is also better for the better educated. The
better educated are substantially less likely to report that they are in poor health, and
less likely to report anxiety or depression.
This module focuses on the overview, evolution and importance of coordinated
school health program. It is important to know the historical development of this
program to know deeper understanding on the next topic. Through this, it enhances
your vocabulary in terms of coordinated school health program.

Learning Outcome

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

 Discuss and understand the overview and evolution of school health program
 Appreciate the importance of coordinated school health program
 Engage a collaborative discussion
Learning Content

COORDINATED SCHOOL HEALTH PROGRAM

Control to describe child health programs that synthesize the different factors working
together to improve the health of a child including school health education, community
involvement, family engagement, physical environment, health services, and more.

The Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention (CDC)
recommends
school districts implement a
Coordinated School Health
(CSH) program. Coordinated
School Health (CSH)
is a system designed to
improve health and academic
achievement. A CSH program
is intended to improve
students’ health and their
capacity to learn through the
support of families,
communities and schools
working together.

The purpose of Coordinated School Health program is to provide a system designed to

address the needs of the whole child by effectively connecting health with education.
This coordinated approach provides the framework for families, communities,
and schools to work together to improve students' health and capacity to learn.

Importance of COORDINATED SCHOOL HEALTH PROGRAM

Schools play a vital role in developing and supporting children as they grow and learn.
Every teacher, parent, administrator and school staff member wants to see students
succeed in school, and establish the skills, knowledge and readiness they will need as
adults.

While Health and Physical Education (HPE) classes are an integral part of school
health, the evidence is clear that the skills and knowledge gained through HPE
programs alone are not enough to provide students with the strong foundation they
need to lead lives that are physically, emotionally, socially and mentally healthy.

By developing healthy school environments, we can set students up for success in the
classroom and beyond.

Health in our schools must extend beyond the curriculum and the classroom to the
entire school setting. Establishing physical and social environments, formal and informal
learning and leadership opportunities, and rules and day-to-day practices that support
and encourage healthy behaviours are all critical factors.

Research confirms that students do better in school when they are emotionally and
physically healthy. They miss fewer classes, are less likely to engage in risky or
antisocial behaviour, concentrate more, and achieve higher test scores. Unfortunately,
too many students go to class in less than optimal health.

A coordinated approach to school health effectively aligns health and education efforts
and leads to improved physical, mental and developmental outcomes for students.
Research studies over the past decade have consistently concluded that student health
status and student achievement are directly connected and, in fact, that student health
is one of the most significant influences on learning and achievement.

Additionally, a coordinated approach to school health reduces fragmentation,

duplication of services and provides a streamlined system for service delivery that is
cost effective.

The School Health and Nutrition (SHN) program is a cost-effective intervention for
resource-poor countries. SHN program aims to provide timely support and preventive
measures to improve the health of school children, which can be associated with their
cognitive development, learning, and academic performance. Stakeholders at different
tiers can play significant roles in the program implementation and its success.

The evolutions of school health program

Numerous public health initiatives, reports, studies, organizations, and professional
societies have promoted the development of school health since the colonial American
era. In fact, Benjamin Franklin advocated a “healthful situation” and promoted physical
exercise as one of the primary subjects in the schools that were developing during his
time. However, prior to the mid-1800s, efforts to introduce health into the schools were
isolated and sparse. It was not until 1840 that Rhode Island passed the first legislation
to make health education mandatory, and other states soon adopted this concept.

In 1850, the Sanitary

Commission of Massachusetts,
headed by Lemuel Shattuck,
produced a report that has
become a classic in the field of
public health and had a
significant influence on school
health. Shattuck served as a
teacher in Detroit and member
of the school committee in
Concord, Massachusetts,
where he helped reorganize the
public school system of the
town. This background led to
school programs receiving
major attention as a means to
promote public health and
prevent disease. The report
states that good health is the
basis for wealth, happiness, and long life and that all children should be taught that
preserving their health and the health of others is one of their most important duties.
Knowledge leads to good health, while ignorance leads to poor health and disease.

Between the late 1800s and 1950, many social concerns and public health issues
focused on the role of schools in promoting and maintaining health. In the 1890s,
schools in Boston and Philadelphia were early pioneers in establishing cooperative
programs with philanthropic organizations to provide school lunches to fight
malnutrition. The era of “medical inspection” in schools started at the end of the
nineteenth century in response to problems of urbanization and immigration. In 1894, 50
“medical visitors” were appointed in Boston to visit schools and examine children
thought to be “ailing.” By 1897, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York had all started
comparable programs, and most of the participating medical personnel provided their
services without compensation. The success of these early programs developed into
more formalized medical inspection. In 1899, Connecticut made examination of school
children for visual defects compulsory. In 1902, New York City provided for the routine
inspection of all students to detect contagious eye and skin diseases and employed
school nurses to help their families seek and follow through with treatment. In 1906,
Massachusetts made medical inspection compulsory in all public schools and this
ushered in broad-based programs of medical inspections in which school nurses and
physicians participated. By 1911, there were 102 cities employing cadres of school
nurses. In 1913, New York City alone had 176 school nurses. A great deal of the
nurses' time was spent in home visits to families with children who had been excluded
from school because of illness or infection, encouraging these families to have their
children treated and returned to school. During this period the prevalence of
tuberculosis in the United States also had a dramatic impact on school health with the
development and spread of “open-air classrooms” in all major cities under the
supervision of both medical and educational personnel.

One of the most influential groups in the

development of school health was the Joint
Committee on Health Problems and Education,
which was jointly sponsored by the American
Medical Association (AMA) and the National
Education Association (NEA). Prior to 1920, the
committee published the report Minimum Health
Requirements for Rural Schools. Their 1927
paper Health Supervision and Medical Inspection
of Schools strongly promoted the emerging
concept of coordination among the medical
services, the physical education, and the health
education programs in schools.

Early in the 1920s, the AMA/NEA Joint Committee on Health Problems and Education
reported the results of a nationwide survey on the status of health education in 341 city
schools. The findings are particularly interesting in light of the current U.S. Public Health
Service's Healthy People 2000, which calls for an “increase to at least 75 percent the
proportion of the nation's elementary and secondary schools that provide planned and
sequential kindergarten through grade 12 quality school health education” (U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, 1990). In the 1920s, over 73 percent of the
surveyed schools taught health directly under the name of “health” or “hygiene.”
Correlating content in their health curriculum to other subjects such as language, civics,
reading, physical education, general science, and art was reported by 108 cities. Daily
inspection for health habits was reported by 69 percent of the 341 cities and nearly 30
percent reported having organized student health clubs for the promotion of health in
the elementary schools.

School health became the focus of a variety of organizations during the 1930s. The May
1938 issue of the Journal of Educational Sociology was exclusively devoted to the
subject under the theme “Health Education.” At the end of the decade, the Educational
Policies Commission of the NEA issued a report, Social Services and the Schools. The
report dealt with administrative guidelines for health examination, medical attention,
communicable disease control, mental health, health instruction, the healthful
environment and regimen, and health supervision of teachers and employees.

The focus on school health continued throughout the next several decades. In 1940, the
U.S. Public Health Service published a 100-page pamphlet titled High Schools and Sex
Education. In 1940, the Eighteenth Yearbook of the American Association of School
Administrators was titled Safety Education. In 1942, the Twentieth Yearbook was Health
in Schools. When many World War II draftees were found to suffer from nutritional
deficiencies, the school was considered the place to focus on a solution; the National
School Lunch Act was passed in 1946 to provide federal funds and surplus agricultural
commodities to assist local schools in providing a nutritious hot lunch to school children.
In 1950, the Twenty-Ninth Yearbook of the Department of Elementary School Principals
of the NEA was titled Health in the Elementary School. The February 1960 issue of The
National Elementary Principal also featured elementary school health programs
including health services, health instruction, and health administration. The AMA/NEA
Joint Committee on Health Problems in Education issued three editions of a publication
titled Health Appraisal of School Children. This booklet established “standards for
determining the health status of school children, through the cooperation of parents,
teachers, physicians, nurses, dentists, and others.”

The most significant school health education initiative of the 1960s was the School
Health Education Study (SHES). This study defined health as a dynamic,
multidimensional entity and outlined 10 conceptual areas of focus that over the years
have often been translated into 10 instructional content areas. These conceptual areas
include such themes as human growth and development, personal health practices,
accidents and disease, food and nutrition, mood-altering substances, and the role of the
family in fulfilling health needs. The primary publication from this initiative was
titled School Health Education Study: A Summary Report, which provided the basis for
most of the current legislation on school health education (Sliepcevich, 1964).
Numerous additional publications resulted from nearly 10 years of this activity, including
curriculum designs and teacher–student resource guides addressing the 10 instructional
content areas of health education across all grade levels.

Several important school health services initiatives also took place in the 1960s,
including the U.S. Public Health Service's study of school health services and the Title I
provision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which tripled the number of
school nurses. Another significant event was the development of the school nurse
practitioner role in the late 1960s. At this time, issues of diagnosis and treatment in
nontraditional health facilities surfaced, and the prevailing belief was that such activities
were not permissible by any primary care provider, including physicians in the school.
However, by 1972, a state-by-state survey sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation failed to uncover any legislation that would prohibit the delivery of these
services in schools, and working in close collaboration with physicians, the clinical
functions of school nurses were expanded to include primary care services. The
introduction of school nurse practitioners into schools resulted in reaching students in
need of primary care, an increase in problem resolution rates, and greater accuracy in
excluding students from school for illness and injury (Hilmar and McAtee, 1973; Kohn,
1979; Silver et al., 1976).

During the twentieth century, several White House conferences have been convened
that relate directly to school health issues. One of the most important was the White
House Conference on Children and Youth, which had a session in December 1970 on
children under age 13 and a session in February 1971 on young people over age 13.
Each of the landmark conferences resulted in specific recommendations and suggested
programs related to school health services, health instruction, and a healthy school
environment.

Many additional developments in school health have taken place in recent years.
Examples include: the establishment and funding of school health initiatives through the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the creation of a Federal Interagency
Committee on School Health, chaired by the assistant secretaries of health and of
elementary and secondary education, and a National Coordinating Committee on
School Health; and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation school-based clinic initiative,
which catalyzed the rapid proliferation of school-based clinics.

The committee will revisit some of these historical developments in its full report in order
to understand the lessons learned and the bases for current programs. However, it is
clear from this brief overview that for many decades, health and education professionals
have joined together to establish, implement, and evaluate school health programs in
response to societal needs. The history of these school health programs provides
perspective and a valuable resource of information for understanding current programs
and for designing and improving programs in the future.

Teaching and Learning Activities

ACTIVITY 1
Instruction: Answer the following questions below.
1. What are the importance of coordinated school health program?
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2. What are the reasons why students do better in school when they are
emotionally and physically healthy?
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3. Why do we need to understand the evolution of coordinated school health

program?
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ACTIVITY 2
Instruction: Summarize the evolution of coordinated school health program. Write your
summary in a bulleted form.
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ACTIVITY 3
Concept maps are useful for students who learn better visually, although they can
benefit any type of learner. After discussing the overview and evolution of coordinated
school health program, it is your time to organize the ideas into categories. Use lines or
arrows on the map to represent how ideas are connected to one another, a particular
category, and the main concept. You may use your own concept map or just use the
map below.

Recommended Learning Materials and Resources for Supplementary Reading

Additional Readings for coordinated school health program, please click the link below:
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/CSHP_Background_Policy_77376_7.pdf

In this video, you can easily understand the overview and evolution of CSH program:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWrAtPlNGGQ

Flexible Teaching Learning Modality (FTLM) adopted

Online (synchronous)
Video Conference Via Zoom
Remote (asynchronous)
Module

Assessment Task

Multiple Choice: Instructions: Read the questions carefully. Choose the letter of the
correct answer and write it on the blank provided.
________1. It is intended to improve students’ health and their capacity to learn through
the support of families, communities and schools working together.
a. School health Center
b. Coordinated School Health Program
c. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
 d. All of the above
________2. It is the most significant school health education initiative of the 1960s.
a. School Health Education Study (SHES)
b. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
c. Health Problems in Education
d. National Education Association (NEA)
________3. Who produced a report that has become a classic in the field of public
health and had a significant influence on school health?
a. Robin Shattuck
b. Lemuel Shattuck
c. Winston Churchill
d. None of the above
________4. It provides timely support and preventive measures to improve the health of
school children, which can be associated with their cognitive development, learning, and
academic performance.
a. Coordinated School Health
b. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
c. National Education Association
d. School Health and Nutrition (SHN) program
________5. It provides a system designed to address the needs of the whole child by
effectively connecting health with education.
a. School health Center
b. Coordinated School Health Program
c. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
d. All of the above

References

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231148/

https://tropmedhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41182-019-0159-4#Sec8

https://hnhu.org/health-topic/the-importance-of-healthy-schools/