Comprehensive health education is a building block approach to creating a healthy future for today's children. Curriculum is designed to build upon itself as students advance through grade levels. It is a planned, sequential, K-12 curriculum that addresses the physical, mental, emotional and social dimensions of health. The curriculum is designed to motivate and assist students to maintain and improve their health, prevent disease, and reduce health-related risk behaviors. It allows students to develop and demonstrate increasingly sophisticated health-related knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices. The comprehensive curriculum includes a variety of topics such as Social and Emotional Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity, Safety including Violence Prevention, Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention, and Personal Health and Wellness.
In grade one, lessons and objectives build upon the foundation of skills learned in kindergarten as do those in grades two through twelve. (See Scope and Sequence Chart). This continuity of information and reinforcement of health practices in age appropriate activities builds a solid core of skills, attitudes and knowledge. Comprehensive health education offers excellent solutions to the ever growing number of chronic health problems people face today. By helping our children to develop positive health habits at an early age and reinforcing them as they mature, we enable them to develop healthy life-styles. We also arm them with the knowledge and skills to make healthy decisions for themselves and their children in the future.
Comprehensive School Health Education (CSHE) is one of the 8 components of Coordinated School Health Programs (CSHP) as defined by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. An excellent example of this is the Michigan Model for Comprehensive School Health Education curriculum. This web site has extensive information about this curriculum and the materials that support it.