Although it is commonplace for early childhood educators to include a theme or unit on pets, opportunities to incorporate safety goals frequently are overlooked. Approximately 400,000 incidents of dog bites to children are documented in the United States annually and this estimate may be low, due to the fact that not all injuries are reported.…

Context: Community Health Centers (CHCs) and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) play a significant role in providing health services for rural residents across the United States. Purpose: The overall goal of this study was to identify the CAHs that have collaborations with CHCs, as well as to recognize the content of the collaborations and the…

This article reports results of a randomized controlled trial designed to test an intervention to increase parent-adolescent sexual risk communication among Mexican parents. Data were analyzed from parents (n = 791) randomly assigned to an HIV risk reduction or health promotion intervention. Measures were administered at pretest, posttest, and 6-…

Prevention is taught only rarely in counseling and counseling psychology curricula. Failure to teach it suggests that graduates may be less likely to conduct prevention. In this article, we describe two key strategies for addressing this problem, where prevention is being taught through (a) required courses, and (b) infusion within existing…

Brief interventions based on motivational interviewing (MI) are emerging as effective strategies for behavior change in college students. However, implementation of MI-based brief interventions may be challenging in the college health environment, and their practicality is controversial. The author explored college health clinicians' perspectives…

National health communication campaign developers have ignored rural audiences in campaign development and testing, despite the health disparities that exist for this group. Researchers in a rural Midwestern state tested the appropriateness of CDC's national colorectal cancer screening campaign, Screen for Life. Based on focus groups and a…

The Action for Healthy Kids (AFHK), a national non-profit group that addresses childhood obesity, released a special report warning that schools still need improvements to the quality of the foods they serve and the amount of physical activity opportunities they offer American children. The report also outlines a significant obstacle--most school…

In the last 20 years the health promoting schools movement has gained momentum internationally. Without strong national leadership and direction its development in New Zealand has been ad hoc and sporadic. However, as the evidence supporting the role of health promoting schools in contributing to students' health and academic outcomes becomes more…

A focus group study was conducted with individuals with developmental disabilities to understand their perspectives on their health status, health promotion behaviors, and health care services they receive. The majority of participants reported good to excellent health, and all had some form of medical insurance. However, participants reported…

Coaching is a dynamic field in which many forms of health promotion occur directly and indirectly on a daily basis. It would therefore be of interest to determine the extent to which research-based data has been collected pertaining to health promotion and its influence throughout coaching. Thus, the purpose of this study was to inductively…

Objective and Participants: The authors surveyed 557 undergraduate students aged 18-56 years to assess weight status, health behaviors, and dietary variety. Methods: They used body mass index (BMI) to divide students into 4 weight categories: underweight (BMI less than 19 kg/m2), healthy weight (19 kg/m2 to 24.99 kg/m2), overweight (25 kg/m2 to…

Objective: To evaluate the effects of implementing a healthy eating policy on nursery schoolchildren's dietary practices in nurseries in Phrae Province, Thailand. Design: Quasi-experimental action research was used to compare the effects of school healthy eating policy on the diets of nursery schoolchildren in eight intervention and eight matched…

Research has established that physical activity and participation in athletics provides important health and social benefits for children. Certain federal laws help ensure that kindergarten-12th grade schools provide students with disabilities opportunities to participate in physical education (PE) and extracurricular athletics equal to those of…

Background: Service learning can enrich students' knowledge, skills and commitment to occupational goals while positively affecting communities. Undergraduate students in a course on obesity engaged in service learning by assisting with a family-based obesity prevention program, Getting Into Fitness Together (GIFT). Purpose: The impact of GIFT on…

Background: To identify whether school health policies and programs vary by demographic characteristics of schools, using data from the School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) 2006. This study updates a similar study conducted with SHPPS 2000 data and assesses several additional policies and programs measured for the first time in SHPPS…