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Wellness and Education

Ensuring safer, healthier students and school employees

Healthy eating patterns are essential for students to achieve their full academic potential, full physical and mental growth, and lifelong health and well-being. Healthy eating is shown to extend life and postpone the development of many chronic diseases in adults.

Schools have a responsibility to help students and staff establish and maintain lifelong, healthy eating patterns and activity levels.

Why is there so much emphasis on wellness?

The consequences of being overweight and of obesity may include:
• Type 2 diabetes
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Stroke
• Some types of cancer
• Gallbladder disease

According to the Kansas Health Institute, the cost of treating obesity related medical problems in Kansas in 2004 was $657 million dollars. This level of spending cannot be sustained without serious financial implications.

Imagine an employer that is wise and progressive, that understands the relationship between the physical and emotional health of its employees and the success in meeting the goals of the organization.

Imagine an employer that would support wellness activities, both during and beyond working hours. That employer would understand the linkage between excessive stress and physical illness and actively seek to reduce unnecessary pressure and burdensome practices and policies. That employer would care enough about the well being of its employees and their productivity to do whatever it would to enhance both.

Now contrast that ideal with your employer, your district or college. Is your employer like the one we imagined? Are existing facilities made available for employees? Can gyms and weight rooms be arranged and secured for use by the employees at their convenience? Are fitness activities supported and even encouraged? Could the district make an arrangement with the recreation commission or the YMCA, if those exist, to provide employee access at no or reduced cost? And, can the association cause those possibilities and more to become realities?

While wellness extends to appropriate nutrition and reducing or eliminating unhealthy choices, general fitness certainly improves attendance and increases the ability to handle the stress that will always accompany such critical careers. But if we don’t take care of ourselves – and insist that employers help out – we won’t be able to as effectively meet the needs of every child.

Poor eating habits are of serious concern for many other reasons:

• Young people who do not get enough calcium are at greater risk for later development of osteoporosis.
• Poor eating habits can contribute to dental caries, which remains a major cause of school absences.
• Almost 9 million children and adolescents in the United States are overweight.
• The prevalence of overweight among children aged 6 to 11 years has more than doubled in the past 20 years, increasing from 7 percent in 1980 to 16 percent in 2002.
• Overweight among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years has tripled in the same time period, rising from 5 percent to 16 percent. African American and Hispanic American children and adolescents have even higher rates.
• Overweight children and teens are more likely to become overweight or obese adults.

The great news is that all of these health problems are preventable with proper diet and adequate physical activity! That’s why having the knowledge and skills to practice a healthful lifestyle are so important!

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What is KSDE doing to help schools meet the requirement?

How can NEA and KNEA Help?

Child Nutrition & Wellness of the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) began working in January 2005 to develop model wellness policy guidelines that:

• Build upon the best wellness policies from across our state and the nation;
• Reflect input from more than 120 national and Kansas experts in the fields of food service, nutrition education, physical education, and health;
• Consider feedback from the many groups impacted by the wellness policy guidelines; and
• Provide for consensus, flexibility and local control.

Next steps are as follows:
Now
KSDE and partners are providing regional training on local wellness policies for school personnel. Twelve workshops are currently scheduled. Districts will be asked to send a team of representatives to these workshops.

Ongoing
KSDE and partners will provide technical assistance to district personnel to support their efforts to adopt and/or adapt the Kansas model wellness guidelines to meet local needs.

July 2006
All districts will have a local wellness policy in place. This policy will be incorporated into each district’s 2006-2007 School Nutrition Program renewal agreement with KSDE.

The entire approach is designed to support schools’ efforts to create a healthier environment for students based on highly credible guidelines, flexibility and local needs.

KSDE is developing an Internet planning tool that will enable districts to

1. comply with state law by documenting that the state model wellness policy guidelines were considered during the process of establishing a local wellness policy;
2. generate a wellness policy score (i.e. basic, advanced or exemplary) based on the goals selected; and e
3. easily create a written local wellness policy. Training on how to use this tool is being provided at the KSDE wellness policy workshops offered statewide this fall.

Find excellent resources through KNEA

KNEA can work with your local as you address wellness policies for your staff. Contact your UniServ director or the Instructional Advocacy director at KNEA.

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