Health Education Programs

Summaries

The following is summarized from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "Research to Classroom" project, which identified curricula that have credible evidence of reducing health risk behaviors among youth.

Growing Healthy (grades K to 6)

Growing Healthy teaches students that the body is each person's greatest natural resource and that its well-being is affected by personal choices made throughout life.

Know Your Body (grades K to 6)

Promotes wellness by making health education personally relevant. Students are taught the significance of personalized health data, such as blood pressure, pulse, and height and weight measurements, and are encouraged to monitor their own health behavior patterns.

Teenage Health Teaching Modules (grades 7 to 12)

Provides adolescents with knowledge and skills that enable them to act responsibly toward their health now and in the future. The curriculum features health skills, self-assessment, communication, decision making, health advocacy, and health self-management.

Life Skills Training (grades 6 to 9)

• Target audience: Students in grades 6 through 9. Ideally, the program should begin in 6th or 7th grade, with booster sessions in subsequent grades.
• Objectives: At the completion of this program, students will have the knowledge and skills to say "No" to smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, and using other drugs; develop a positive self-image; make decisions on their own without being influenced by peer pressure; resist peer and media pressure to smoke, drink, or use other drugs; manage anxiety; and cope with the challenges of adolescent life.
• Length and placement: 15 class periods scheduled 1 or more times per week. Booster sessions of 10 class periods in year 2 and 5 class periods in year 3.
• Topics:
  • Resistance Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes
    Social influences to smoke, drink, or use drugs
    Norms supporting the nonuse of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs
    Prevention-related knowledge
    Skills for refusing offers to smoke, drink, or use drugs
  • Self-management Skills
    Problem solving and decision making
    Personal behavior change skills (goal setting, self-monitoring, self-reinforcement)
    Stress and anxiety management
  • General Social Skills
    Effective communication skills
    Greetings and brief social exchanges
    Meeting new people
    Conversational skills
    Complimenting skills
    Assertiveness skills
• Contact information: Princeton Health Press, 609/921-0540

Project Toward No Tobacco Use (Project TNT)

• Target audience: Ideally, students in 7th grade. Has been implemented with white non-Hispanic, Latino, African American, and Asian adolescents, ages 10 to 15 years old.
• Objectives: At the completion of this program, students will be able to reduce their initiation or regular use of tobacco products (smoked and smokeless); state accurate information about the course of tobacco addiction and disease, the consequences of using tobacco, and the prevalence of tobacco use among peers; demonstrate skills including active listening, assertive refusal, effective communication, self-esteem building, and tobacco use-specific cognitive coping skills; illustrate ways the media portray "social images" that influence tobacco use; understand and practice advocating for no tobacco use; and make a public commitment about future intentions towards tobacco use.
• Length and placement: 10 core lessons and 2 booster lessons, 40 to 50 minutes each. The 10 core lessons are designed to occur during a 2-week period, with the booster lessons 1 year later, during 2 days or 2 weeks.
• Topics:
  • Active listening skills
  • Information about the course of tobacco addiction and tobacco use prevalence
  • Self-esteem building
  • Tobacco use-specific cognitive coping skills
  • Effective communication skills
  • General assertiveness and assertive refusal learning and practice
  • Counteracting media-related tobacco use social influences
  • Social advocacy and public commitment about tobacco product nonuse
• Contact information: Sande Craig, University of Southern California, 213/342-2586

Get Real About AIDS

• Target audience: students in grades 9 to 12
• Objectives: At the completion of this program, students will reduce their risk of becoming infected with HIV [human immunodeficiency virus] by delaying sexual activity; if sexually active, by using good judgment and abstaining from drug use, using condoms correctly, getting tested for HIV, and being monogamous; not sharing needles
• Length: 14 class periods
• Topics:
  • Perception of vulnerability to HIV
  • Functional knowledge about HIV, including its transmission, its nontransmission, its effects
  • Myths and facts about HIV
  • Testing for the presence of antibodies to HIV
  • The use of condoms
  • Sexually transmitted diseases other than AIDS [acquired immunodeficiency syndrome]
  • Skills to avoid risky situations
  • Norms related to sex and AIDS
• Contact information: Altschul Group Corporation (materials), 800/323-9084; Comprehensive Health Education Foundation (training), 800/323-2422

Be Proud! Be Responsible!

• Target audience: African American, Hispanic, and white youth, ages 13 to 18, who attend inner-city schools and community-based programs
• Objectives: At the completion of this program, students will increase their knowledge about HIV, AIDS, and other STDs [sexually transmitted diseases]; believe in the value of safer sex, including abstinence; have confidence in their ability to negotiate safer sex and to use condoms correctly; reduce sexual risk behaviors, and take pride in and responsibility for choosing responsible sexual behaviors.
• Length: 5 hours. Can be implemented in 5 to 6 sessions of 45 to 60 minutes, in three 2-hour sessions, in two 2 1/2-hour sessions, or in one 5-hour session.
• Topics:
  • Knowledge about the cause, transmission, and prevention of HIV, AIDS, and other STDs
  • Beliefs about
    • personal risk of HIV infection,
    • abstinence and use of condoms and spermicide as means to reduce the risk of HIV infection,
    • a partner's willingness to accept safer sex practices, and
    • condoms as a means for enhancing sexual enjoyment
  • Negotiation, refusal, and condom use skills to reduce risky behaviors
  • Self-efficacy and confidence in using skills to reduce risky behaviors
• Contact information: Select Media (materials), 212/732-4437; Staff Development Office, Rocky Mountain Center for Health Promotion and Education (training), 303/239-6494

Reducing the Risk

• Target audience: Students in grades 9 and 10. In addition, the curriculum has been successfully implemented in middle school and high school
• Objectives: At the completion of this program, students will evaluate the risks and lasting consequences of becoming an adolescent parent; recognize that abstaining from sexual activity or using protection consistently are the only ways to avoid pregnancy or HIV and other STDs; conclude that factual information about conception and protection is essential for avoiding teenage pregnancy or HIV and other STDs; and demonstrate effective communication skills for remaining abstinent and for avoiding unprotected sexual intercourse.
• Length: 17 class periods
• Topics:
  • Vulnerability to pregnancy and HIV
  • Advantages of abstinence
  • Using refusal skills and delay tactics to avoid unprotected sex
  • Recognizing and avoiding high-risk situations
  • Getting and using protection to avoid unwanted pregnancy and STDs
  • Information about transmission of STDs
  • Behaviors that place individuals at greatest risk for exposure to HIV
  • Developing plans for protection
  • Sticking with plans to avoid sex or unprotected sex
• Contact information: ETR Associates, 800/321-4407

Becoming a Responsible Teen

• Target audience: African American adolescents, ages 14-18, and other youth.
• Objectives: At the conclusion of this program, participants will state accurate information about HIV and AIDS, including means of transmission, prevention, and current community impact; clarify their own values about sexual decisions and pressures; and demonstrate skills in correct condom use, assertive communication, refusal, information provision, self-management, problem solving, and risk reduction.
• Length: 8 sessions, 1 1/2 to 2 hours each
• Topics:
  • Information about HIV and AIDS
  • Sexual pressures as they affect adolescents
  • Condom skills
  • Assertiveness skills
  • Communication skills
  • Personalization of risk
  • Making decisions about sex or drugs
  • Educating peer and family members about HIV/AIDS
• Contact information: National Training Partnership, Education Development Center, 617/969-7100