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Coordinated School Health
Coordinated School Health (CSH) is a systemic approach of advancing student academic performance by promoting, practicing, and coordinating school health education and services for the benefit and well-being of students in establishing healthy behaviors designed to last their lifetime. There are 10 components that cover all aspects of the school environment and are linked together to function as a unified, effective system that benefits the entire school community.
Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH)
In accordance with the state law to adopt and implement a CSH progrm, Alief ISD adopted a program entitled Coordinated Approach To Child Health. Which aims to impact messaging a child receives in physical education, the lunchroom, the classroom, and the home, to form an effective resource that impacts a child’s choices not only in school, but lifelong. Two of the most important ways that CATCH creates behavior change are by enabling children to identify healthy foods, and by increasing the amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) children engage in each day. Our terminology for identifying healthful foods–GO, SLOW and WHOA–has been adopted even colloquially nationwide as a simple means of labeling food’s nutritional content. Further, CATCH is designed and proven to coordinate healthy messages throughout the community and fully integrates the Centers for Disease Control’s “Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model; the expanded Coordinated School Health approach.
CATCH Goals
Improve the nutritional quality of school meals by promoting and coordinating ideas for linking good food to good health. Promoting the consumption of more GO foods than SLOW foods and more SLOW foods than WHOA foods.
Provide teachers with user-friendly, easy to implement resources that blend health topics with core academic areas.
Get students, parents and extended family members involved in practicing and adopting healthy eating and physical activity behaviors at home.
Promote student’s enjoyment and participation in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) during PE classes, extra-curricular activities, and recreation time with family and friends.