National Health Education Standards

National Health Education Standards, Third Edition, empowers preK-12 health educators to develop high-quality health education programs that improve outcomes for students, providing them with skills for lifelong health and well-being. Created by SHAPE America-Society of Health and Physical Educators, the leading advocate for health and physical education, this text unveils the revised standards and performance indicators, offers guidelines for implementation and assessment, and advances the idea that health education means equity, access, and inclusion for all.

Going beyond the standards and performance indicators themselves, National Health Education Standards, Third Edition, offers detailed guidance on how to effectively implement them. It leads preservice teachers and current practitioners in planning curricula, building lesson plans around the standards, and creating meaningful assessments. This latest edition features the revised standards, which reflect the following key shifts:

• Incorporating developmentally appropriate progressions of performance indicators for each standard across the grade spans
• Incorporating asset-based language (i.e., words, phrases, and concepts that focus on the strengths and potential of students)
• Emphasizing not only individual behavior change but also broader structures, including families, communities, and laws and policies that affect health and well-being
• Incorporating themes related to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion

The book begins by examining the guiding principles for the National Health Education Standards and the goals of health education. It devotes a full chapter to equity, access, and inclusion for all, including the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model. It then provides advice on the implementation of curriculum design and instruction plans and types of assessments within health education. The book concludes with a closer look at the standards and provides additional details on the revision process and the need for updated standards to keep pace with an evolving world.

Administrators and teachers can confidently use National Health Education Standards, Third Edition, to create high-quality health education programs that prepare students to be healthy and well throughout their lives.