The National Health Education Standards (NHES) were created to establish, promote and support health-enhancing behaviors for students in all grade levels.
The NHES are written expectations for what students should know and can do to promote personal, family and community health.
All the evidence-based and evidence-informed substance use prevention programs at Prevention Plus Wellness address National Health Education Standards.
Take for example the evidence-based SPORT Prevention Plus Wellness (PPW) program for youth.
SPORT PPW is listed on the National Registry of Evidence Based Programs and Practices (NREPP), as well as Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness, Promising Practices Network, Child Trends, Washington State Institute for Public Policy, and other evidence-based databases.
Below are the National Health Education Standards and how they are addressed using the SPORT Prevention Plus Wellness program.
The SPORT PPW scripted program content and accompanying PowerPoint slides communicate to youth how health-promoting behaviors enhance health, fitness and wellness outcomes and positive self-image, while risky substance use habits interfere with these goals and harm healthy behaviors and self-identity.
Messages presented in the SPORT PPW program ask youth to consider how peers, parents, media, norms, self-image, and health risk habits can influence their health habits, health, and health-related decision-making.
SPORT Prevention Plus Wellness includes valid and reliable web-based health resources for students and parents to evaluate. These resources are grouped into the health topics targeted in the SPORT PPW program, including physical activity and sports, healthy eating, getting adequate sleep, controlling stress, and avoiding alcohol, marijuana, tobacco and other drugs. Web links and descriptions of each of the resources are provided.
The SPORT PPW program content addresses substance use refusal skills, and includes a series of parent flyers shown to increase parent-youth communication about prevention and health issues. In addition, youth can learn and demonstrate communication, teaching and coaching skills when be trained in our Youth Leadership Workshop to implement SPORT PPW to younger peers.
SPORT PPW assesses the current health behaviors of youth, and provides them with tailored feedback. This process increases student awareness of peer and future desired self-images as values for deciding which health promoting habits to practice, and which health risk substance use habits to avoid or reduce.
In the SPORT PPW program, like all Prevention Plus Wellness programs, students set and monitor goals not only to avoid marijuana, alcohol, tobacco and other drug use, but also increase one or more health-promoting behaviors including physical activity, healthy nutrition, sleep, or stress control.
SPORT PPW and all Prevention Plus Wellness programs are designed to have students analyze the role of individual responsibility for improving and protecting health, and demonstrate the connections between a variety of healthy and risky behaviors and how both types of behaviors are associated with enhanced health, positive self-identity, and success.