Office of Curriculum, Technology, & Assessment

Purpose of the Health Education Standards Document

Schools have an enormous responsibility for helping students develop the knowledge and skills they need to be healthy and achieve academically. Since comprehensive school health education occurs within the context of education and learning, it contributes to the broader mission of schools.

These standards are a framework for state education and health agencies and local school districts to use to create an instructional program that will enable their students to become healthy and capable of academic success. It is a framework for decisions about which lessons, strategies, activities and types of assessment to include in a health education curriculum.

The intent of comprehensive school health education is to motivate students to maintain and improve their health, prevent disease and avoid or reduce health-related risk behaviors. It also provides students with the knowledge and skills to be healthy for a lifetime.

Comprehensive school health education is a planned, sequential pre-kindergarten through grade 12 curriculum that addresses the physical, mental, emotional and social dimensions of health. A comprehensive curriculum includes broad content areas on personal health, family health, community health, environmental health, growth and development, sexuality, mental and emotional health, injury prevention and safety, nutrition, prevention and control of disease, and prevention of substance use and abuse.

Effective curricula focuses on learning critical health skills such as communication, stress management, decision making and goal setting. The rationale for the focus on skills is derived from health education theory and is supported by research that has demonstrated the effectiveness of skills-based curricula in influencing students’ health attitudes and practices.