Learn how to build a 'Healthy Schools Program' that places the child at the center of a wholistic and culturally sustaining school community where youth are healthy, safe, challenged, supported and ready to learn.
The 10-component Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) Framework advanced by ASCD and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) supports health, education, and school-family-community partnerships to create access to:
Massachusetts has created a Roadmap to Healthy Schools (MA Roadmap) with notes and resources to make it easy to use the WSCC framework to take action in your school. The Roadmap, which draws from Michigan's WSCC-based Steps to a Healthy School Website, highlights how most evidence based models for improving the school health environment direct school communities to follow a similar path: (1) assemble a comprehensive, diverse team to (2) choose an evidence-based assessment tool to identify priorities for (3) program planning and implementation, and (4) monitoring and evaluation, which can ideally be shared out for peer-to-peer learning as a success story.
The MA Roadmap incorporates systems thinking principles, centers health equity, including school-family partnerships, and designs for sustainability, ensuring a bi-directional focus on documenting best practices in local school wellness policy.
During 2019 – 2023, the Department will partner with the CDC to use cooperative funding to provide statewide supports as well as fund priority districts. Targeted funding will be provided (FC650) to implement best practices across the school health environment in communities whose student and community health outcomes (e.g. obesity, availability of nutritious food, economic disadvantage, etc.) and student academic outcomes (e.g. accountability levels, dropout, absenteeism, etc.) have been identified as able to be positively impacted by applying the WSCC model.
Healthy Schools Program staff assist MA school districts in learning to improve the school health environment. Together they work to improve school wellness infrastructure, and access to professional development and technical assistance to create healthy school environments by:
Collecting data in three surveillance systems used to monitor health behaviors, practices, and policies in schools: the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, the School Health Policies and Practices Study, and the School Health Profiles.
Data collected through these systems are used to identify effective strategies, develop and evaluate programs, and develop guidelines and tools to improve school health policies, programs, and curricula.
DESE provides access to local Youth Risk Behavior Survey in MA.
The Healthy Schools Program provides Technical Assistance and Professional Development on School-Based COVID-19 mitigation strategies:
The Whole School, Whole Child, Whole Community Model promotes family engagement to help parents and caregivers engage, connect and sustain meaningful participation in school health communities according to an evidence based framework called Parents for Healthy Schools.
District Technical Assistance providers have considerable training, coaching, mentoring and or lived experience and are available to provide local district staff with support on evidence-based frameworks, best practices, tools and resources, assist team-building, program design and evaluation, success stories, policy assessment, education and improvement, district trainings and mentor new staff. These include:
Health, Wellness and Safety for Staff: This presentation provides an overview of the health and safety requirements for food service directors and staff. The presentation is available to view at any time.
Introduction to Systems Thinking: This presentation provides an overview of How can you solve problems by addressing their underlying causes rather than treating the symptoms?
NIOST Professional Development Archive: The National Institute on Out-of-School Time offers a library of resources on Professional Development and links to free resources including After School Gets Moving which can be downloaded here: Free Resource: After School Gets Moving.
ASCD School Improvement ToolThis brief assessment tool helps ASCD members assess whether the central tenets of the WSCC model are met, namely if students are safe, supported, healthy, challenged, and ready to learn.
Virtual Healthy SchoolsVisit the CDC's Virtual Healthy School website to click through a visual demonstration of a school environment that supports the health and academic achievement of all students. You can see what a healthy school environment looks and feels like and find WSCC-based resources to create one of your own.
School Health IndexSchools can print out or use the SHI Online Tool to assess and align their current policies and practices to evidence based practices in the ten different realms that align to the WSCC model as well as create an action plan to identify priorities to improve implementation of best practices. The online School Health Index course is available to:
For more information, please contact: Lenore Maniaci, Whole School, Whole Child, Whole Community Coordinator in the Office of Student and Family Support at 781-338-3010 or achievement@mass.gov.
Last Updated: March 12, 2021
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education 135 Santilli Highway, Everett, MA 02149
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