When Are We Going to Teach Health?
Duncan Van Dusen
Fact: Health improves learning.
Yet nationwide, elementary school students spend twelve times more classroom hours studying history than health. Worse, most kids don’t get enough physical activity and over 5 million underage youth vape.
In When Are We Going to Teach Health?, Duncan Van Dusen, the CEO of one of the most widely used youth health education programs in the world, makes a novel, sometimes irreverent, case for prioritizing “Whole Child” health and SEL in K-12 schools.
He shows why health drives academic success, what makes teaching health effective, and how to create a school environment that delivers and sustains healthy behavior. Using case studies, tips, and recommended actions, he describes proven youth empowerment and skills-based health education techniques to increase kids’ physical activity and healthy food choices and to decrease youth vaping.
Half of the proceeds from this book will fund health education in low-income schools.
Press & Praise
"Protecting the current and future health of our children is our collective societal responsibility and our schools provide a powerful platform to provide evidence-based health education to all of our children. Van Dusen provides a compelling blueprint for changing our attitude about health in schools across our nation."
"A witty and thoughtful consideration of where education and health intersect and what the reality and possibilities are for schools. You will walk away from this book with a strong sense of urgency and purpose about the importance of health in schools!"
"I assigned this book to my undergraduate public health class because Duncan Van Dusen does a much better job than our textbook in distilling what matters, especially as it relates to physical activity and nutrition in the school environment."
