Coordinated School Health

Coordinated school health is a strategy recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the process of improving students' health and learning in the nation’s schools.

There are eight components of coordinated school health:

• health education;
• physical education;
• health services (designed to ensure access and/or referral to primary health care services);
• nutrition services;
• counseling, psychological, and social services;
• a healthy and safe school environment;
• health promotion for school staff members; and
• family/community involvement in the health and well-being of students.

CDC advises that the health and academic success of young people is strongly linked. Consequently, CDC also advises, helping students stay healthy is a fundamental part of the mission of schools (schools cannot achieve their primary mission of education if students and staff are not healthy).

According to CDC, school health programs and policies in the United States have resulted, in large part, from a wide variety of federal, state and local mandates, regulations, initiatives, and funding streams. The result, in many schools, is a “patchwork” of policies and programs with differing standards, requirements, and populations to be served. In addition, the professionals who oversee the different pieces of the patchwork come from multiple disciplines: education, nursing, social work, psychology, nutrition, and school administration, each bringing specialized expertise, training, and approaches.

A coordinated school health strategy may enable schools to eliminate gaps and reduce redundancies across its many initiatives and funding streams, and it may also help to build partnerships and teamwork among school health and education professionals in the school. Ideally such a strategy will help focus efforts on helping students to engage in protective, health-enhancing behaviors and to avoid risk behaviors.

For additional information about these eight coordinated school health components, please visit:

CDC: Components of Coordinated School Health

For additional information about the coordinated school health strategy (including how schools can implement coordinated school health), please visit:

CDC: Adolescent and School Health: Coordinated School Health

Background information:

CDC: Adolescent and School Health

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention