Background: School health education, including sexual health education, plays a crucial role in shaping adolescents' protective health behaviors, experiences, and outcomes. Adolescents need functional knowledge and skills to practice, adopt, and maintain healthy behaviors for preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including human…

It has been almost 40 years since HIV emerged in the human population with an alarming impact in 1981, quickly reaching pandemic proportions. Reaching the goal of eradication, or at least ending the pandemic, however, has not been as easy as hoped. To better understand and therefore better address the persistence and often devastating effects of…

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diabetes prevention represents a critical need for the health education curriculum, given the rise of the disease and its precondition for today's youth. An active understanding of diabetes encourages young people to take control of the nutritional and exercise factors that keep the…

In the United States, childhood obesity continues to increase at unprecedented rates. School-based occupational therapists can play a more significant role in health promotion and obesity prevention efforts in the school setting. Since this is a relatively new role for occupational therapists, there is still a tremendous gap in the literature…

This guidance has been developed following a roundtable bringing together the sector with key agencies, drawing on behavioural research, effective practice and lessons learned from the past year. As students and university staff return to campus for in-person teaching and wider activities, it is important for universities to continue encouraging…

What does a community-centered vision for substance use prevention and early intervention services in schools look like? Healthy Schools Campaign community advisory board members -- including education, healthcare and community leaders and youth advocates -- tackled this question while developing a new framing for addressing youth substance use…

Promoting behaviors that prevent infectious disease is a primary curricular aim of school health education. Enabling students to advocate for influenza prevention using social media is a teaching approach consistent with this aim. Objectives: Students will be able to: 1) identify and describe strategies for influenza prevention; 2) describe and…

The purpose of this paper is to update and enhance the 1989 Association for Health Education (AAHE) Scholar presentation, "Reflections on Directions in Health Education: Implications for Policy and Practice," at the American Association for Health Education (AAHE) National Convention in Boston. It describes and complements the notion of…

Morbidity and mortality related to chronic diseases are a primary concern of health professionals, including Health Educators. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over one half of the adult population in the United States suffer from one or more chronic conditions. Understanding the health risk behaviors that contribute to…

By providing HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP (a single daily oral pill), in a primary care college health setting, clinical providers can make a dramatic contribution to the current and long-term health and well-being of the students they see. This viewpoint article describes the approach taken to instituting primary care PrEP services at…

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosis and is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States for both men and women. The etiologies of many different types of lung cancer can be linked to risk factors that can be prevented, such as chronic tobacco smoking. Lung cancer is significantly more prevalent among…

Africa and most of the global south continue to experience a striking burden of communicable diseases, neglected tropical diseases, and high rates of maternal and child mortality, as well as disastrous internecine conflicts and floods. While Africa has been making steady progress in addressing communicable diseases, it now faces new threats from…

The transition to parenting (Galinsky, 1987) can be a tumultuous time, particularly when parents have experienced traumatic and stressful life circumstances. Interventions to help these parents often focus on the first 2 years after birth because of the importance of this sensitive period for babies' developing brains. However, we describe…

Nearly all lifelong smokers start as children or young adults, and the tobacco industry targets these specific age groups. A key public health effort to limit the use of tobacco products by people under the age of 21 years is the promotion of the "Tobacco 21" initiative. This initiative promotes and supports efforts to establish bills…

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for adolescents and has become a public health concern in the United States. In addition, certain groups of students are more at risk for suicide than others. School counselors have an ethical obligation to protect their students and are in an ideal position to educate students and staff about the risks…