1. Implement recommendations from The Role of Michigan Schools in Promoting Healthy Weight
2. Establish a Coordinated School Health Team in your school
3. Complete the Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT)
4. Use Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT) results to make policy and environmental changes
5. Facilitate action in your community by joining Michigan Action for Healthy Kids

1. Implement recommendations from The Role of Michigan Schools in Promoting Healthy Weight

• This consensus paper provides practical guidelines and policy recommendations for schools to promote healthy weight for students of all shapes and sizes. The Michigan Department of Education, Michigan Department of Community Health, Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Sports, and the Michigan Fitness Foundation, in collaboration with the expertise of child health professionals from more than thirty organizations, have addressed the weight concerns facing Michigan’s children.

• This paper provides an innovative road map for Michigan schools and communities to use when addressing healthy weight and healthy school environments.

2. Establish a Coordinated School Health Team in your school

This can be a newly created team, an existing team such as a School Health Council, or a new subcommittee of your school’s management council, sex education advisory committee, or staff wellness committee. Choose people whom you think represent your school and community. It is strongly recommended that your team include an administrator, a physical education teacher, the health education teacher, your school nurse or other health services provider, a parent, the school food service manager or director, and the school counselor, psychologist or social worker.

Health and success in school are interrelated. Schools cannot achieve their primary mission of education if students and staff are not healthy and fit physically, mentally, and socially. The National Association of State Boards of Education

Other key people on your team may include: coach or athletic director, classroom teacher, community-based health care provider, MSU Extension staff member, member of the parent/teacher organization, high school student, and/or representative from a community health organization such as the American Heart Association, the Cancer Society or the local health department.

3. Complete the Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT)

To find out more about the Healthy School Action Tools, go to www.mihealthtools.org/hsat. All Michigan schools* are invited to register and complete the Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT).

• The Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT) were developed to help Coordinated School Health Teams assess whether their school environment offers consistent messages about the importance of healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco-free lifestyles, asthma management, and violence and injury prevention AS WELL AS opportunities for students to make healthy choices.

• The Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT) Assessment consists of eight separate modules; each corresponds to one of the components of a Coordinated School Health Program, and all follow a similar format. Each module contains questions for your team to answer about the module topic; responses result in points. The scorecard provided enables your school to compare itself to the totals possible.

• The online HSAT Action Plan is tool that helps schools determine meaningful goals, identify actions that support those goals, assess the feasibility of those actions, and then work on completing the actions online where team members can access the information and contribute to it. For more about the tool, please visit http://mihealthtools.org/hsat/default.asp?tab=abouthsat#plan.