Healthy Students Are Better Learners

Research shows a strong connection between healthy behaviors and academic achievement (e.g., grades, standardized tests, graduation rates, attendance). Healthy students are better learners, and academic achievement bears a lifetime of benefits for health. However, youth risk behaviors, such as physical inactivity, unhealthy dietary behaviors, tobacco use, alcohol use, and other drug use are consistently linked to poor grades and test scores and lower educational attainment.

Schools are an ideal setting to teach and provide students with opportunities to practice healthy behaviors. School programs can use the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model to promote positive health behaviors and lessen negative health behaviors.

School programs that account for the individual, family, school, and community can positively influence both student health behaviors and learning. Evidence-based, effectively coordinated, and strategically planned school health programs and services are also necessary for closing the academic achievement gap.

About CDC Healthy Schools

Schools have direct contact with more than 95% of our nation’s young people aged 5-17 years, for about six hours per day and up to 13 critical years of their social, psychological, physical, and intellectual development. Schools play an important role in promoting the health and safety of children and adolescents by helping them to establish lifelong health patterns.

Healthy students are better learners, and academic achievement bears a lifetime of benefits for health. Schools are an ideal setting to teach and provide students with opportunities to improve their dietary and physical activity behaviors and manage their chronic health conditions (asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, food allergies, and poor oral health). When policies and practices are put in place to support healthy school environments, healthy students can grow to be healthy and successful adults.

CDC Healthy Schools works with states, school systems, communities, and national partners to prevent chronic disease and promote the health and well-being of children and adolescents in schools. The Whole School Whole Community Whole Child (WSCC) model is our framework for addressing health in schools.   The WSCC model is student-centered and emphasizes the role of the community in supporting the school and the importance of evidence-based policies and practices.

Partnering with key leaders from the health and education fields, CDC Healthy Schools promotes—

• Healthier nutrition options and education
• Comprehensive physical activity programs and physical education
• Improved processes and better training to help students manage chronic conditions
• Health education that instills life-long healthy habits and health literacy
• Practices that improve school health services and links to clinical and community resources

By:

• Funding state education agencies, providing them with technical assistance, and developing specialized tools, recommendations and resources to help in the work they do for school health.
• Working with non-governmental organizations to complement and strengthen the work of the state grantees in our school health priority areas.
• Providing resources and training for school administrators and staff to help ensure students are healthy and ready to learn.
• Providing information and resources to help parents become involved in their child’s school, advocate for their child, and help shape a healthy school environment.
• Collecting data in our surveillance systems to inform decision making and evidence based strategies.

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) Overview

What is the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)?

The YRBSS was developed in 1990 to monitor health behaviors that contribute markedly to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth and adults in the United States. These behaviors, often established during childhood and early adolescence, include

• Behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence.
• Sexual behaviors related to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection.
• Alcohol and other drug use.
• Tobacco use.
• Unhealthy dietary behaviors.
• Inadequate physical activity.

In addition, the YRBSS monitors the prevalence of obesity and asthma and other health-related behaviors plus sexual identity and sex of sexual contacts.

YRBSS includes a national school-based survey conducted by CDC and state, territorial, tribal, and local surveys conducted by state, territorial, and local education and health agencies and tribal governments.

What are the purposes of the YRBSS?

The YRBSS was designed to

• Determine the prevalence of health behaviors.
• Assess whether health behaviors increase, decrease, or stay the same over time.
• Examine the co-occurrence of health behaviors.
• Provide comparable national, state, territorial, tribal, and local data.
• Provide comparable data among subpopulations of youth.
• Monitor progress toward achieving the Healthy People objectives and other program indicators.

What are the components of the YRBSS?

The YRBSS includes national, state, territorial, tribal government, and local school-based surveys of representative samples of 9th through 12th grade students. These surveys are conducted every two years, usually during the spring semester. The national survey, conducted by CDC, provides data representative of 9th through 12th grade students in public and private schools in the United States. The state, territorial, tribal government, and local surveys, conducted by departments of health and education, provide data representative of mostly public high school students in each jurisdiction.

Health Disparities

Health disparities are preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations. Populations can be defined by factors such as race or ethnicity, gender, education or income, disability, geographic location (e.g., rural or urban), or sexual orientation. Health disparities are inequitable and are directly related to the historical and current unequal distribution of social, political, economic, and environmental resources.

Health disparities result from multiple factors, including

• Poverty
• Environmental threats
• Inadequate access to health care
• Individual and behavioral factors
• Educational inequalities

Health disparities are also related to inequities in education. Dropping out of school is associated with multiple social and health problems. Overall, individuals with less education are more likely to experience a number of health risks, such as obesity, substance abuse, and intentional and unintentional injury, compared with individuals with more education. Higher levels of education are associated with a longer life and an increased likelihood of obtaining or understanding basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.

At the same time, good health is associated with academic success. Higher levels of protective health behaviors and lower levels of health risk behaviors are been associated with higher academic grades among high school students. Health risks such as teenage pregnancy, poor dietary choices, inadequate physical activity, physical and emotional abuse, substance abuse, and gang involvement have a significant impact on how well students perform in school.

Protective Factors

Efforts to improve child and adolescent health have typically addressed specific health risk behaviors, such as early initiation of sexual intercourse, tobacco use or violence. However, results from a growing number of studies suggest that greater health impact might be achieved by also enhancing protective factors that help children and adolescents avoid multiple behaviors that place them at risk for adverse health and educational outcomes.

Protective factors are individual or environmental characteristics, conditions, or behaviors that reduce the effects of stressful life events. These factors also increase an individual’s ability to avoid risks or hazards, and promote social and emotional competence to thrive in all aspects of life, now and in the future.

Positive Parenting Practices

Parenting is not easy. Many outside influences distract our youth and add challenges to parenting efforts. Youth need adults who are there for them—people who connect with them, communicate with them, spend time with them, and show a genuine interest in them. A key parental role is helping teens understand that their health and well-being—now and in the future—are not simply a matter of chance, but a matter of choice.

By engaging in positive parenting, parents can help their adolescent make healthy choices.

School Connectedness

School connectedness—the belief held by students that adults and peers in the school care about their learning as well as about them as individuals—is an important protective factor. Research has shown that young people who feel connected to their school are less likely to engage in many risk behaviors, including early sexual initiation, alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use, and violence and gang involvement.

Students who feel connected to their school are also more likely to have better academic achievement, including higher grades and test scores, have better school attendance, and stay in school longer.

Efforts to improve child and adolescent health have typically addressed specific health risk behaviors, such as tobacco use or violence. However, results from a growing number of studies suggest that greater health impact might be achieved by also enhancing protective factors that help children and adolescents avoid multiple behaviors that place them at risk for adverse health and educational outcomes.

Parent Engagement in Schools

Parent engagement in schools is defined as parents and school staff working together to support and improve the learning, development, and health of children and adolescents. Parent engagement in schools is a shared responsibility in which schools and other community agencies and organizations are committed to reaching out to engage parents in meaningful ways, and parents are committed to actively supporting their children’s and adolescents’ learning and development. This relationship between schools and parents cuts across and reinforces children’s health and learning in multiple settings—at home, in school, in out-of-school programs, and in the community.

Engaging parents in their children’s school life is a promising protective factor. Research shows that parent engagement in schools is closely linked to better student behavior, higher academic achievement, and enhanced social skills. Parent engagement also makes it more likely that children and adolescents will avoid unhealthy behaviors, such as sexual risk behaviors and tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use.

 CDC, Healthy Students are Better Learners, October 19, 2017  Division of Population Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion    https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/health_and_academics/index.htm

CDC, About Healthy Schools  October 11, 2018  https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/about.htm

CDC, Youth Risk Behavior Survey,  https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/index.htm?s_cid=hy-homepage-002

CDC Health Disparities August 17, 2018 https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/disparities/index.htm

CDC Protective Factors August 7, 2018  https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/protective/index.htm