Promoting Healthy, Active Living at School

Schools can play a crucial role in promoting healthy, active living through a collaborative approach.  Schools have the opportunity to teach and demonstrate health promoting lifestyle habits, set community standards that promote healthy weight, and prevent weight-based bullying and mistreatment. 

Teach and Demonstrate Healthy Nutrition and Activity Levels

Children are a captive audience, accustomed to learning at school and assimilating those lessons into their lifestyle.  A well-planned teaching curriculum can emphasize long-term healthy lifestyle habits and promote healthy body self-image.  Demonstration of these ideals can occur through school-provided foods, incorporating frequent fruits and vegetables, avoiding sugar-sweetened beverages and limiting highly processed and nutrient poor foods.  Physical education activities can provide opportunities to explore different sports and identify activities of interest as well as contribute to the 60 minutes of daily activity recommended for school age children.

Set Community Standards that Promote Healthy Weight

Many children develop strong and durable friendships during their time at school and their behaviors can be heavily influenced by their peers. Setting community norms that promote healthy, active living can help all children in achieving a healthy weight.

• Promote healthy snacks at athletic events.  Often the energy children consume from post-game snacks exceeds the energy burned during the athletic event.  Increased nutritional quality of post-game snacks and providing water instead of sports drinks for most sporting events will help teach children how to fuel their body around exercise. 
• Encourage reasonable celebrations, both at school and at home.  Many celebrations involve multiple treats over multiple days.  Schools can recognize birthdays in creative ways that do not involve food.  When celebrations do involve food, schools can encourage families to provide water or plain milk in addition to one age-appropriate celebratory treat.  This can decrease the burden of celebratory sweets on young children.
• Have water bottle filling stations readily available on school campuses.

Addressing and Preventing Weight-Based Bullying and Mistreatment

Children with excess weight are often subjected to teasing and mistreatment based upon their weight.  The impacts of bullying on a child can be profound, leading to long term effects on physical and emotional health. Students that are teased about their weight are less likely to participate in physical activity and sports at school and are more likely to skip class.  Weight-based teasing is never acceptable and should not be tolerated.  Schools are encouraged to select and implement whole-school bullying prevention programs. 

Pediatricians Can Influence Healthy, Active Living Related Efforts at Schools.  Consider becoming involved by:

• Reviewing and revising nutrition, activity, and wellness policies.
• Modeling healthy lifestyle behaviors
• Volunteering as sports/sideline team physicians
• Advocating for adoption of healthy nutrition and activity policies that exceed local requirements
• Participate in community gardens
• Engaging parent communities in adoption of community standards to promote wellness
• Take part in AAP advocacy efforts through your state or local chapters

AAP Policy Statements & Clinical Report

Stigma Experienced by Children and Adolescents with Obesity
This policy statement from the Section on Obesity and the Obesity Society seeks to raise awareness regarding the prevalence and negative effects of weight stigma on pediatric patients and their families.

The Built Environment: Designing Communities to Promote Physical Activity in Children
This policy statement from the Committee on Environmental Health highlights how the built environment of a community affects children’s opportunities for physical activity.

The Role of the Pediatrician in Primary Prevention of Obesity
This clinical report from the Committee on Nutrition describes the rationale for pediatricians to be an integral part of the obesity-prevention effort.

Snacks, Sweetened Beverages, Added Sugars and Schools
This policy statement from the Council on School Health & Committee on Nutrition discusses how pediatricians can offer a perspective promoting nutrient-rich foods within calorie guidelines to improve foods brought into or sold in schools.

Resources Available for Families on Healthy Children.org

• Energy Out: Daily Physical Activity Recommendations
• Obesity Prevention
• Weight-based Teasing and Bullying in Children: How Parents Can Help

Additional Resources

AAP’s Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight
The Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight serves as a translational engine for pediatric obesity prevention, assessment, management and treatment; and moves policy and research from theory into practice in American healthcare, communities and homes.

CDC’s Nutrition, Physical Activity, & Obesity Data & Statistics
This webpage includes data on youth’s dietary and physical activity behaviors in addition to school policies and practices to encourage obesity prevention strategies.

CDC’s Healthy Schools : Eating Healthier at School
This webpage includes strategies to encourage students to eat healthier at school, in addition to resources such as sample framework and guidelines for schools to implement.