Comprehensive School Health Program - Essay Example

Comprehensive School Health Program Affiliation Comprehensive School Health Program Comprehensive school health program is a part of the school reform that seeks to eliminate or reduce health related barriers to personal and student academic success. Comprehensive school health programs are created to reinforce health-promoting activities and offer the skills students need to avoid the undesirable health practices. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, CSHP is developed to handle six risk behaviors that are causing premature morbidity and mortality among young persons across the nation.

The negative behaviors affect health and the subsequent capacity for both academic and personal success during the adolescence years and into adulthood. The six major risk behaviors are tobacco use, sexual behaviors, behaviors resulting from intentional and unintentional injuries, alcohol, and other drug use, and physical inactivity (NMSA Research Summary n.d).  Since the high-risk behaviors usually arise from the interactions between individuals and circumstances outside and within the students school experience, it is critical to enlist agencies, persons, and organizations to handle these behaviors.

Based on this, comprehensive school health programs tackle the health needs within the environment of the students living conditions and the local community. Eight interdependent components are included in CSHP. They are school environment, health education, food service programs, health services, physical activity and physical education, social services, counseling, psychology, worksite health promotion for staff, and integration of community resources. The components offer additional support, opportunities, and services that a number of students require to be successful.

 The most recent alterations aimed at making school meals healthier have resulted in unintended results. First, as enrollment goes down, financial worries pile up. Many argue that some the new rules are too fast and too much that it drives students away from health meals. This is according to a spokeswoman for the nonprofit School Nutrition Association, Diane Pratt-Heavner. According to Pratt-Heavner, recent research has established that almost a quarter of schools reported their school programs run at a net loss.

The said losses have been brought up by the district at the expense of education funds. The second controversial issue is that with the healthy foods on the menu, students have a choice between vegetables or fruits, but they do not have to eat them. Research shows that many students do not eat two out of the five lunch options offered in a day. According to the journal Public Health Nutrition over five hundred elementary school trays studied, students throw away a third of the grain, vegetables, and fruits (Minelli & Breckon 2009).

One of the most common budgetary constraint faced by most comprehensive school health programs is insufficient funds needed for evaluation. Often these programs and projects budgets are inadequate regarding the financial support they get. As a result, evaluation funds are usually relocated to other activities. The consequence of this is that the assessment designs are over simplified. It is a way in which schools find it easy to reduce the cost and time requirements that are associated with the valuation process.

Oversimplification of evaluations, designs, and procedures of the CSHPs can result in the reciprocated controversies that are related to it. A decent example of an institute that implemented creative measures to tackle budget constraints is Woodland Hills School. The school was faced with budget shrinks and pension costs increasing; the institution had to come up with creative methods to raise funds to cater for the costs (Coyne 2013). One of the imaginative means applied is through fundraisers that the institution arranged in conjunction with the parents.

However, since the school was not in a position to get more funds through fundraising, it had to come up with mean to do more with less money.  References Coyne, J. (2013). Schools Districts getting more creative as Budgets Continue to Tighten. Pittsburgh Business Times. Available at: http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/print-edition/2013/04/05/school-districts-getting-more-creative.html NMSA Research Summary. (n.d). Comprehensive School Health Programs. Available at http://www.ncmle.org/research%20summaries/ressum13.

html Minelli, M. J., & Breckon, D. J. (2009). Community Health Education: Settings, Roles, and Skills. London, U.K, Jones and Bartlet Publishers International.