THE ROLE OF THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT IN CONTRIBUTING TO CHILDREN’S WELLNESS
Volume 77, Number 1 Jan/Feb 2006
Summary
The need to improve children’s nutrition and physical activity has never been greater and schools are an ideal setting to help make this happen. Child-hood overweight is at an all-time high as a result of poor food choices and a sedentary lifestyle. Paradoxically, many children’s diets are low in essential nutrients such as calcium, potassium, fiber, magnesium, and vitamin E. Children’s unhealthy food choices, sedentary lifestyles, and resulting overweight can have adverse health, academic, and economic effects.
Schools are an ideal setting to help improve children’s health by providing more healthful food options throughout the total school environment, more opportunities for children to be physically active, and more behavior-focused nutrition education. In recognition of the health crisis facing the nation’s school-aged children and the important role that schools can play in improving children’s health, the federal government has issued a new regulation to encourage healthy school environments.
As part of the government’s Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 (P.L. 108.265 Section 204), each school district offering federal meal programs (e.g., school lunch) must establish a local wellness policy by the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year. Each school wellness policy must include specific elements such as appropriate goals for nutrition education, physical activity, and nutrition standards for all foods available in schools, and the involvement of a broad group of members of the community (e.g., parents, students, school board members, the public, etc).
When developing school wellness policies, it is important to base nutrition and physical activity standards on the 2005 Dietary Guidelines (e.g., encourage low-fat dairy, fruits and vegetables, and whole grains). Children’s low intake of milk and other dairy foods and dairy food nutrients such as calcium, as well as dairy’s health benefits, are among the reasons to make dairy foods a part of school wellness policies.
Many resources and tools are available to help schools develop and implement school wellness policies. National Dairy Council’s “New Look of School Milk” program is one example. This program is based on findings from a School Milk Pilot Test that demonstrated that more children drink milk – a naturally nutrient-rich beverage – when it is offered in kid-appealing, plastic re-sealable containers in various sizes, served cold, and in a variety of flavors at more locations in schools (e.g., vending machines, school stores, etc).
Action for Healthy Kids (www.actionforhealthykids.org), a public-private partnership of more than 50 national organizations and government agencies and its 51 State Teams, is a valuable resource to help develop, implement, monitor, and evaluate school wellness policies.
Health and school professionals can move children toward more healthful diets and physically active lifestyles by getting involved in Action for Healthy Kids State Teams and school wellness.
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