Different aspects of school involvement towards health and wellness has long been thought to influence students. Research argues that health promoting lifestyle activities maintain or improve individual’s health and wellness (reference). Researchers suggest that health promotion includes a process of empowerment of the community to act on the improvement of their life and health qualities (research) A closer look into a healthy lifestyle begins at childhood. Healthy lunches promote physical activity and healthy diets. School lunches need to have nutritional value and a well-balanced nutrition scale including fruits, grains, vegetables, protein and dairy. Recess enhances health and academic benefits. Recess involves more than just stimulating indoor activities, but also simply thirty minutes of exercise outside. Moreover, the healthy lifestyle needs promotion by an authoritative figure or institution. Many students rely on teachers, principals, nurses, etc. to teach them the essentials of health because parents may lack the knowledge to do so.
In a school setting, health promotion entails providing students with educational courses, activities, school lunches, and recess. All of these factors contribute immensely to the balance of a student’s life. Control must be given to the student to allow them to improve their health and cause a rise in awareness. The purpose of this study evaluates the methods that public and private middle schools in the Athens metro area distribute
Obesity can often be the consequence of living in a household that instill unhealthy eating habits. Schools can be a positive influence on teens early in life so that obese teens can lead into their adult lives with healthier habits. With these healthier habits, they may likely have more energy to become positive influences in others lives to be healthy and be able to do more. If schools can make such an impact on students’ lives, they should try, even if they needed to sacrifice extra money or instructional time. In 2007, there was a study that only one fifth of high school students had eaten fruits and vegetables at least five times a day in a week (Wexler, 2010). While it is unreasonable to force someone to eat these foods, if they are regularly offered as part of school lunches, students may eat them if they have finished the rest of their lunch and are hungry. Schools should be encouraged to even add fruits and vegetables to vending machines for healthier options.
First of all, evidences suggest that the health promoting school program can effective reduce several types of risk behaviors and solve health related issue via implement a diversity of health education strategies (Stewart-Brown, 2006). In addition, the approach can improve the health knowledge, attitude and behavior of individuals and bring positive effects to education and health outcome (Moon et al., 1999).
I feel like schools should pay closer attention monitoring the health of children because health is such an important factor in everyday life and not all children are given that luxury at home. Some students might feel that they are overweight and schools can help students understand what the real definition of overweight is, how can they stop becoming overweight and the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Sometimes the stigma of being overweight can lead to eating disorders of students so it’s good to promote positive eating
“The physical and emotional health of an entire generation and the economic health and security of our nation is at stake” a quote made by the First Lady, Michelle Obama, as she launches her comprehensive initiative to change the way children think about nutrition and physical fitness (“Learn the Facts,” 2010). Three decades ago, children lived active lives that kept them healthier. They walked to and from school, ate home cooked, reasonable portion meals with vegetables and played outdoors most of the time. Today, children ride the bus instead of walk, eat more fast food and snacks throughout the day because parents are busier, and watch more television or play video games rather than be active outside with peers (“Learn the Facts,” 2010). Young children are becoming overweight and obese along with being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes more frequently. They are making poor dietary choices, inadequate physical activity, and spending too much screen time all contributing to the obesity crisis. One of the effective solutions to reversing the trend of childhood obesity is to provide safe, affordable and accessible after-school health and physical fitness educational programs for all school ages across the nation.
Implementing these lifestyle habits will result in healthier people and lowered rates of chronic illness. One avenue to best prevent the development of chronic disease is to have health and wellness programs in the community, workplace, and schools (NCSL, 2012). If the population was properly educated on how to realistically live healthy lifestyles, then it would be easier to change and adopt healthier habits. This is especially true for adolescents in the school system. If nutrition and health classes were mandatory components of education across the nation, children would be able to learn healthy habits early on in life and more easily maintain those habits as they grow older. Results of these programs would be vastly beneficial due to a reduction in chronic disease prevalence. In addition to promoting healthy lifestyles and chronic disease prevention, discovering and implementing newly effective treatments are paramount to reduce chronic disease. With more advanced technology and medications, early detection and management of chronic diseases are improved and risks for CCM are reduced (Chatterjee et al., 2014). These improvements will not only
School lunches, curriculum focus, and daily activities have changed in elementary schools over the years. The nutritional value in school lunches often meet a bare minimum. Curriculum is focused strongly on idealistic future careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; but often forget teaching basic healthy habits needed for lifelong health. Physical education is no longer required every single day. Obesity has become an epidemic and not just for adults, it is increasingly affecting children as well. Children spend a generous amount of time in the classroom. They spend more time in school than at home or anywhere else. Therefore, schools have a responsibility in preventing obesity in adolescents by teaching them healthy habits, serving them nutritious food, and providing them with adequate physical activity.
Therefore, modifying the Healthy Hungry-Free Kids Act of 2010 is a great start to meeting the needs of a more diverse student body. In deciding to keep the program the same, active and athletic students leave school undernourished everyday. Consequently, students not receiving their nutritional needs could also quench their hunger with unhealthy alternatives. For example, they could choose to visit a gas station before a sport practice to get through the practice. A healthy lunch program is ineffective if, in effect, it causes students to consume more unhealthy alternatives. Overall, this either causes undernourished students or students indulging in unhealthy alternatives. Neither of these is a good outcome for the students health, it would more effective to offer a second serving of healthier food during
Schools can play an active role in obesity prevention through focusing on healthy eating and active lifestyle in their curriculum (Hardy, Farrell & King, 2007). Teachers educate students about the importance of healthy lifestyles in the key learning area of PDHPE. Health and Physical Education (HPE) is also a core subject in new K-10 Australian Curriculum. Both the K-6 PDHPE and K-10 HPE syllabuses incorporate outcomes and content that explicitly addresses healthy eating and physical activity. PDHPE has such an important role in the curriculum as it provides students with the education they need to adopt lifelong healthy, active
Not only do schools offer unhealthy foods for children, but most do not offer the required amount of physical activity. Most adolescents fall short of the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommendation of at least one hour of aerobic activity every day. Only 18% of students in high school met that recommendation in 2007. All schools need to require some sort of a physical activity class. In 2009 only 33% took daily physical education classes. (CDC 2) Needless to say, schools play a very crucial role in the problem of childhood obesity. Physical Activity in schools could be a huge key in helping fix this problem.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare ‘good health is an important element in a child’s quality of life as it can influence participation in many aspects of the life, including school and physical education’. A poor start to a child’s life increases the outcome of a poor adult life, as 24.9% of children aged from 5-17years already overweight or obese. These statistics are based on The International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), who have developed a standard age and sex-specific Body Mass Index (BMI) cut off point. Nutrition is the key factor of a student’s health and wellbeing, already students are; eating 48% junk food per day and eating majority foods that fall under the ‘red food’ category. (Health
Research has found that when kids get enough exercise, their learning skills, attitude and behavior at school improve. The same is true when they have access to healthy food choices. By helping kids be more physically active and eat well, we help them succeed academically, better preparing them for lifelong success.
Of all of the problems that dishearten children today, the one that bothers them the most is being unhealthy. Five out of six students from the Manalapan Englishtown Middle School agree that there should be a change in the schools' cafeteria foods; they came up with a solution to help kids be healthy. Unhealthy foods should be eliminated in schools for many reasons. First of all, kids concentrate better when they are healthy. Being healthy helps children to concentrate better because if they are healthy in the inside and the outside, they will not have to worry about their health or how they look. Secondly, having only healthy foods in school help parents to take good care of their kids. For instance, imagine a mom that is a seventh
With the rise of cardiovascular diseases, it is the time that we create ways to incorporate more daily physical activity each day and emphasize health and nutrition with students. One approach I would take would be to warn the families of the importance’s of physical activity and good eating habits. A way to do that would be to set up a meeting where all health educators can come together to introduce fun and exciting activities that their children can participate in and present them with hard evidence of the rise of childhood obesity. Having this meeting will hopefully open parent’s eyes so they can start enforcing their child to eat better and be more active rather than having them sit behind a gaming system all day long. The goal is to hopefully make these students participate in physical activity for the rest of their lives.
Children who were classified into the intervention groups were selected to participate in the after-school health program, while the comparison groups participated in other after-school programs (such as yearbook development and young scientists). They used the modified version of the Traffic Light Diet model and the importance of exercise which they applied the traffic light but more concentrated on the green and red colored foods. The objectives of this program was to enhance the knowledge of young children of healthy eating and the importance of exercise.1 Children of both schools worked weekly with a coach to discuss healthy eating and exercise using motivational interviewing; each week they had to select one healthy eating and one exercise goal which they can work on at
External factors can be recognised as interventions from surrounding environments such as government, school or law. All of these environments provide a wide range of information about health that is available through specific sources and intend to improve the health of people. Although the level of provided information is extensive that does not always mean they are fully competent. There are a few positive interventions made by schools that focus on educating children on the subject of health. One of these interventions is providing physical education in schools, which is needed in present times as children are overwhelmed by electronic devices. It stimulates them to being active and gives an opportunity to take part in a wide range of sporting activities (Y158, cited in L185 Block 3 Session 3, p.13). Another intervention refers to a healthy diet, more specifically to meals that are provided in schools. There is a high involvement of media that comments on what kind of food is served by school kitchens. Parents as well as a society expect that schools offer balanced nutrition and encourage children to take a healthy approach to their diet (Y158, cited in L185 Block 3 Session 3, p.14). One more intervention is educating children about health, which is included in their lessons. Information given during the lessons is focusing on having a greater understanding and knowledge of health matters (Y158, cited in L185 Block 3 Session 3, p.13).