California Health Framework Issues - Essay Example

As a preliminary matter, the California Health Framework envisions and advocates a coordinated school health program. By coordination, it is meant that a number of stakeholders must be identified, encouraged to participate in meaningful ways, and persuaded that they can contribute to student health education, student health at the individual level, and to more expansive notions such as family health and community health. It has been noted, for instance, that “Children and adolescents are more likely to practice healthy behaviours when those behaviours are broadly supported at school, at home, and in the community” (Health Framework: 11). This broad type of support, therefore, must draw on people from the school itself, from the students’ support network at home, and relevant health care and other professionals in the community. The best way to gain support is by enlisting networked groups, explaining the objective links between student health and performance, and then implementing a coordinated program with regular assessment periods.

A variety of risk factors influence whether or not a child will be healthy and will maintain a commitment to health. The school, the home, the community, and the peer group are four major areas of a child’s life in which these risk factors may be found. The risk factors include, among others, economic deprivation, neighbourhood disintegration, poor family-management practices, peers who use alcohol and other drugs, low expectations for children’s success, and academic failure. Although some risk factors are far beyond a school’s control, others can be addressed directly and effectively through health education supported by collaborative efforts that include parents, the school, and the community (Health Framework: 11-12).

The significant point is that, because these risk factors derive from a variety of sources, the response must be comprehensive enough to ameliorate or otherwise create an educational and support system to be of value. The risk factors may result from conditions in the home, conditions in the community, conditions at a particular school or some combination thereof. The very essence of a student’s physical, cognitive and psychological health is multifaceted and the response must also be nuanced and multifaceted.

Such a coordinated school health program is of paramount importance at the kindergarten to twelfth-grade levels; it is of paramount importance because these children are grappling with several changes and challenges both in their biological and psychological development as well as in their homes and their communities.  Although, at the macro level, a coordinated structure is viewed as essential, it is also important to note that the teachers and the student health professionals must assume greater responsibilities and they must transcend their traditional duties if the school is to fulfil its role as an invested stakeholder. Teachers, for instance, must do more than simply lecture against or punish certain unhealthy behaviours. They must not be viewed as disciplinary adjuncts or mini-police officers; quite the contrary, teachers must begin to develop a position of trust and confidence which more closely resembles those of health care professionals than the role of judge and executioner. They must be aware of the risk factors that attend certain stages of physical and cognitive development; they must appreciate the risk factors peculiar to their community; and, they must work together with the school health care professionals in identifying and acting upon potential and actual problems. Unless students can feel secure in confiding in their teachers there is very little chance that they will confide honestly.

In the final analysis, the very notion of health advocated by the California Health Framework presupposes causal relations among a variety of stakeholders; thus, any meaningful approach to health education must rally these stakeholders together into a coordinated team and work together to benefit students, schools, and communities.