Duncan Van Dusen - When Are We Going to Teach Health?: Lets Teach Health as If Each Childs Life Depends on It – Because It Does

What follows in these pages is a synthesis of information about why teaching health is important to schools and children, what techniques make it effective, and how schools should integrate it as part of their core mission. This book lives at the intersection of two of our societys most pressing concerns: health and education, specifically public health and public education.

This book explains why teaching and supporting positive health behaviors should be a first - order goal of K12 education rather than an afterthought. The case rests on two key facts which I will discuss in Part I.

First, healthy children are more productive learners, so an educational system that doesnt prioritize health education is ignoring one of the keys to its own success.

Second, the foundational behaviors of physical activity, proper nutrition, and tobacco avoidance are the key protective factors against almost all major noncommunicable diseases including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and (with regard to the first two behaviors) obesity and Alzheimers disease. These behaviors are also crucial to maintaining mental health and immune health, the second of which suddenly emerged as a national concern during the COVID -19 communicable disease crisis and affects whether students can even attend school. The economic and social impacts of these diseases are gargantuan and can be substantially reduced by learning basic health behaviors early in life.

Because of this disease burden, the U.S. spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country, while lagging behind other World Bank high - income countries in helping its citizens live long and healthy livesmeasured by the World Health Organization as Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE). In 2016, the United States HALE was 68.5 years at birth, tied for 42nd with Poland and the lowest among the 30 most economically developed countries. In a world with overall steady increases in life expectancy, between 2010 and 2016, the United States was one of only four countries whose HALE declined. (The other three were Iraq, Libya, and Syria, all of which endured deadly civil wars during that period.) This dismal picture looks even worse when you take into account the vast life - expectancy differences and directional trends between higher - and lower - income communities in America. That gap is perhaps the exact reason our HALE falls between those of high - income and low - income countries.

We are spending too much, too late on reactive treatment of preventable disease, and it is not working well. It is time to move upstream and help a wider population avoid disease by practicing healthy habits earlier and more often. And what institution is better positioned to reach a broad swath of Americas childrenespecially low - income onesthan our public schools? Schools are the best, and possibly only, means to ensure that all children obtain the health knowledge and skills they need for long and productive lives.

This book is for all K12 educators, professional or not, who collectively contribute to deciding what schools teach: principals, classroom teachers, parents of school - age children, curriculum directors, superintendents, local school boards, state and federal education policy makers and departments, and community advocates. In the U.S. alone, there are some 50 million of us, and about the same number of K12 students. As such, one in three Americans is either a K12 educator or a K12 student.

When schools teach health at all, they typically teach it as a supplemental class, like art, instead of as a core subject, like math. To be effective, health education needs to be given higher priority andunlike any other subjectthe way it is taught must go beyond information transfer. Effective health education changes behavior by shaping positive attitudes and beliefs about health, developing the social and emotional skills necessary to practice good health habits, and creating and sustaining a community that supports healthy behaviors. Health education is often called, and should really be thought of as, health promotion.