Healthy schools resources

General healthy schools info

  • Check the Action for Healthy Kids page for parents where you can download a Parents are the Power Toolkit in English or Spanish. The toolkit was designed to help parent teams create healthy changes in their schools in terms of nutrition and physical activity/education.
  • See the latest healthy schools best practices guide published by Colorado Legacy Foundation, created to support statewide education initiatives in the area of health and wellness, educator effectiveness and best practices. You can download a copy in English or Spanish.
  • Healthy Learning Paths, a Broomfield-based nonprofit, aims to empower children by teaching wellness strategies for success in health, learning, and life. This organization offers some excellent free workshops for parents on nutrition, movement and school readiness. Click on the calendar of events.
  • Check out the Healthy Schools Network, a nonprofit organization devoted to ensuring that all schools are free of dangerous pesticides and toxins or other contaminants. You’ll find information on a range of issues, from hidden playground risks to the effects of the BP oil spill on schools. You can learn about Healthy Schools Day and how to promote the event locally.
  • The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools is a nonpartisan resource center at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. CHHCS builds on a 20-year commitment to achieve better health outcomes for children and adolescents through school-connected health programs and services. The site features useful information on a range of topics, including: childhood obesity, asthma management, media violence, tobacco use and teen suicide.
  • First Lady Michelle Obama has put a major target on childhood obesity. Check out her Let’s Move initiative for a variety of ideas about how to invigorate schools to be more health-conscious, including information on how to join the HealthierUS Schools Challenge. And the Let’s Cook feature is worth checking out. Top chefs offer up affordable – and creative – menus for you to tackle at home. Click on the section for parents for more ideas that will keep your family healthy.
  • Join the Healthy Schools Campaign to nurture your inner healthy schools activist.
  • See this Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment report on how Colorado’s children and young people eat, how much they exercise and obesity rates in the state.
  • Check out the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to see what it’s doing to promote healthy schools, including the personalized Healthy Schools Builder program.
  • Check out a variety of reports on health issues, including the merits of school-based health clinics or why we need more supermarkets in this state, on the Colorado Health Foundation website.
  • Get information on flu vaccines, concussions in young people, stress, obesity – you name it – on the American Academy of Pediatrics website.
  • The esteemed Mayo Clinic also offers a host of information on children’s health, including issues that affect school: age appropriate sports, head lice and the flu.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers up some insight on a range of youth-related health topics, including tobacco use, sexually risky behaviors and an online tool to evaluate the physical education program at your child’s school.
  • The Parent Engagement Network (PEN) in Boulder Valley is a parent-led grassroots community movement that has received local and national attention for its interactive, positive approach to parent engagement.  While based in Boulder, its incredible roster of events for parents are free and open to anyone, such as one talk entitled “Celebrate parenting in a world of diversity” or “You-Twit-Face,” an event aimed at helping parents understand the ever-changing world of technology. Sign up for the PEN newsletter.
  • If you want to know how much work you may have cut out in terms of improving student health in your area, check out this interactive map published by Kaiser Health News. Drag your curser over the county to see its rank in the state in terms of healthiness. To get more detailed information, click on your county.

Food, etc.

  • Check out the Integrated Nutrition Education Program based at the University of Colorado-Denver.
    This website is a good resource for the parents, students and teachers. The website is also available in Spanish. Find more information on the importance of fruit and veggies and lots of good recipes.
  • From our very own EdNews Parent expert and self-described “renegade lunch lady” Ann Cooper comes The LunchBox: Healthy Tools to Help All Schools. Learn about the Great American Salad Bar Project, which aims to get salad bars in all schools and school menu samples (this is NOT the hot lunch we ate as kids). Also see her other site called Chef Ann Cooper: The Renegade Lunch Lady. Or, look at various feasibility studies and other good, scientific data on the School Food Project site, a project run by Boulder Valley schools.
  • LiveWell Colorado is a nonprofit organization committed to reducing obesity in Colorado by promoting healthy eating and active living. We have LiveWell Colorado to thank for a series of school lunch culinary boot camps held across the state in the summer of 2010. Also, want to know how your school is doing? Find school lunch health assessments in English and Spanish.Having trouble coming up with healthy snack ideas? Here’s more than you need to know to get a few more ideas.
  • The federal government is getting quite fancy indeed with its food pyramid. Check out all the nifty, interactive things you can do on MyPyramid, such as assessing the good, the bad and the ugly of your daily food intake.
  • Boulder business ZisBoomBah will put some spice into your meal planning process – especially if you live in a home with picky eaters. Let your children – or even your spouse – play some fun games and come up with some creative menus.
  • There’s also the Food Friends, created through the Colorado State University Cooperative Extension, which focuses on fun ways to get your preschoolers eating healthy foods and moving their bodies more.
  • Join the locally grown food craze with a specific emphasis on attaining fresh fruits and veggies from not-too-far away by tapping the resources of Farm to School.
  • Founded in 1992, The Food Trust works to improve the health of children and adults, promote
    good nutrition, increase access to nutritious foods, and advocate for better public policy. Find resources on niche topics, such as the role of the corner store in providing healthy children’s snacks.
  • Denver Urban Gardens has a long history of cultivating healthy crops in urban landscapes and is branching out into schools. The newer Boulder-based Growe Foundation is the organization that sprouted the Garden to Table program in several Boulder Valley schools.  Children get to plant the seeds, cultivate the plants and see the fruits of their (and many, many committed volunteers’) labor. They eat the veggies; and, in an ideal situation, teachers use the gardens to augment the curriculum.
  • Need to get pumped up to take action? Watch this compelling TED talk by food revolutionary Jamie Oliver.
  • USA Today has exhausted considerable resources researching the safety of school lunches. See the newspaper’s data collection and news archive.

Physical fitness

  • Get the feeling that kids don’t run around as much outside during the school day as they used to? Your perception is correct. Check out this policy brief by Active Living Research. Or see the Active Living Research Center’s website, which offers free (and very smart and cool) software tools that can be used to document your community’s activity levels.
  • Treeswing is filled with physical education and physical activity resources for schools.
  • Known for sports coverage, ESPN tackled the broader societal problem of the childhood obesity epidemic.
  • The University of Colorado at Denver is home to Learning Landscapes, an initiative aimed at creating playgrounds that not only challenge a child’s physical self, but spark her imagination and desire to learn as well. Learning Landscape is behind 55 new playgrounds now under construction in Denver.

Bicycling and walking to school

  • This Bicycle Safety Activity Kit for students, in English and Spanish, was designed by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
  • The Colorado Department of Transportation offers up some tips on ensuring safe walking or bicycling routes to and from school.
  • The National Center for Safe Routes to School has abundant resources, along with tips and resources to run your own successful Walk to School Day event.
  • The Boltage program, begun at a Boulder elementary school, is one of the most innovative programs we’ve seen because of the way it blends technology with more traditional prizes. A solar powered machine beeps or buzzes every time a kid with a Boltage sticker on his or her bicycle helmet rides under it. The buzz or beep is cool on its own – but also serves a purpose by logging the number of days children bike (or walk) to school. Children get prizes at the end of the year based upon the days they’ve logged.
  • The Safe Routes to School National Partnership is a fast-growing network of hundreds of organizations, government agencies and professional groups working to set goals, share best practices, secure funding, and provide educational materials to agencies that implement Safe Routes to School programs. The partnership’s mission is to serve a diverse national community of organizations that advocates for and promotes the practice of safe bicycling and walking to and from schools throughout the United States.

Substance abuse and underage drinking

  • The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration offers this free pamphlet featuring tips for teens about marijuana use. The website also offers abundant resources on substance abuse and mental health issues affecting children and teens.
  • Get the latest data on underage drinking, drug use and cigarette use among high school aged youth through the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Monitoring the Future survey findings.
  • The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration provides a tool to help you tackle underage drinking in your home and/or community.

Dental health

  • Let’s not forget the importance of dental health. For information on confusing topics, such as whether to use oral sealants on children’s teeth, see the National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center.
  • The Healthy Teeth Happy Babies campaign, sponsored by the Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation offers solid information for parents in English and Spanish on how to care for your children’s teeth.

Mental health

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Have you found useful resources for parents addressing healthy schools? E-mail the EdNews Parent editor.

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