Strand descriptions

The School Wellness conference planning committee has identified the following major “strands” of the 2009 conference as they relate to creating healthier school environments:

Community and Family Engagement

This strand focuses on leveraging resources through parent, family, student, and community involvement and collaboration to ensure the health and well-being of children and their communities.

Health Services/Education

This strand focuses on children’s health concerns and how schools and communities are fashioning innovative and cost effective approaches designed to addresses their multi-faceted needs.

Healthy and Safe School Environment

This strand focuses on supporting and encouraging safe, healthy and nurturing school environments.

Mental Health

This strand focuses on the social and emotional well-being of students through comprehensive and cohesive school-community prevention and intervention strategies.

Nutrition Education/Services

This strand focuses on innovative and cost effective efforts related to improving child nutrition programs and nutrition education services, increasing student access to healthier foods and helping establish healthy eating habits in school, afterschool and community settings.

Physical Education/Physical Activity

This strand focuses on effective strategies and policy changes necessary to improve physical education and increase physical activity for the benefit of children’s health, academic success, and the development of life-long healthy behaviors.

School Wellness Policies

This strand focuses on the implementation, monitoring, evaluation and leveraging of district policies to create and sustain healthy school environments and improve academic achievement.

Staff Wellness

This strand focuses on innovative programs, practices and opportunities districts have implemented to improve staff health status, morale and commitment to building healthy school environments.

While the conference organizers are particularly interested in proposals addressing these topics, this does not preclude consideration or inclusion of other topics and exemplary programs.

Click here to submit your proposal online.