Practices essential in school health education include targeting priority health behaviors, scheduling sufficient programing to elicit change, providing a health promotion model, addressing commonalities of skills, choosing appropriate instructional methods, soliciting student and parent involvement, providing diverse interventions, integrating…

Describes one elementary school's experience utilizing undergraduate nursing students as an alternative resource for providing health education. Nursing students observed in the classroom, prepared teaching plans, and presented topics. Participants reported that the experience was effective in relation to the levels of achievement attained by…

School mental health (SMH) programs and services have grown progressively in the United States in the past two decades, related to increased acknowledgement of their advantages and prominent federal initiatives (e.g., No Child Left Behind Act President's New Freedom Initiative; 20(13). Nonetheless, SMH is an emerging and tenuously supported field…

Moderate physical activity provides substantial health benefits for individuals not only in fitness, athletic, and health organizations, but also for individuals who struggle with addictions and behaviors in correctional programs. The purpose of this pilot study is to examine the relationship between physical activity and offender attitudes. The…

Attrition in weight loss programs is a complex process, influenced by patients' pretreatment characteristics and treatment variables, but available data are contradictory. Only a few variables have been confirmed by more than one study as relevant risk factors, but recently new data of clinical utility emerged from "real world" large observational…

This paper argues that many internationally financed literacy programs do not sufficiently take into consideration important daily life issues of the learners, including nutritional deficiencies that may hinder learning, or of children-parent-society interactions that may improve learning. As a result, many programs have become synonymous with…

Background: As society continues to focus on the importance of academic achievement, the physical environment of schools should be addressed as 1 of the critical factors that influence academic outcomes. The School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) 2006 provides, for the first time, a comprehensive look at the extent to which schools have…

The Life Enhancement Afloat-Ashore Program (LEAAP) was a comprehensive worksite health program implemented on five U.S. Navy commands. It addressed substance abuse, fitness, life enhancement skills and behaviors, and recreation awareness and opportunity. The program included videotape education sessions at the worksite; command-sponsored health,…

This booklet describes Creating New Choices, a violence prevention project begun in Victoria, Australia, in 1994. It is designed to integrate violence prevention tools into the educational arena. The program is based on a critical examination of the whole school culture, with the goal of creating a socially just environment for all members of the…

Reports findings from the final year of a tobacco use prevention project for junior and senior high school students. After three years of intervention with junior high students, researchers assessed the relative effectiveness of continued, lapsed, and delayed interventions in high school. In grade 11, continued intervention students had the lowest…

Perspectives are provided to help evaluators of health promotion programs. Eight papers present critical issues in such evaluations, including: (1) conceptual themes of program theory and context; (2) topics related to measurement, data analysis, and research design; and (3) reports of evaluation studies. (SLD)

Presents an overview of theories, recommendations, and guidelines to consider before beginning a schoolsite health promotion program. Starting programs without understanding the complexity of the task may do more harm than good. The chronological model for schoolsite health promotion projects involves initial assessment, organization,…

Investigated whether college level peer educators were adequately prepared to teach peers about sexual health, sexual assault, and substance abuse. They completed 20 hours of training on the issues and on public speaking, leadership, and presentation skills. Pretesting and posttesting indicated that the program increased students' factual…

The 1990's have seen a nationwide development of initiatives designed to provide school-linked comprehensive services to children and families. The level of collaboration among schools and community-based agencies required by such initiatives is unprecedented and offers an opportunity for systemic changes in the way professionals, families, and…

The purpose of this study was first to assess and then to improve the diet of Greek primary school children teaching them healthy dietary habits and instructing them to face critically advertisements and media projected dietary models using a program which included intervention on cognitive, emotional, and social level. The results show that our…