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Fit, Healthy, and Ready to Learn: A School Health Policy Guide

Fit, Healthy, and Ready to Learn: A School Health Policy Guide—Sample Policies to Promote Sun Safety and Prevent Skin Cancer* provides direction on establishing an overall policy framework for school health programs and specific policies on various topics. It is designed for use by states, school districts, and individual schools, public or private.

The policy guide is organized around sample policies that reflect best practice, which can be adapted to fit local circumstances. Also included are explanations of the points addressed in the sample policies, excerpts of actual state and local policies, notable quotations, and other valuable information that supporters can use to justify school health policies.

The sample policies are written as statements of best practice that all states, school districts, public schools, and private schools should endeavor to adopt. The points they address were suggested by the CDC school health guidelines, actual state and local policies collected by NASBE and NSBA, and comments reflecting the expert opinions of many reviewers. The policies can be adapted or revised to fit the needs of individual states, districts, and schools.

Implementation of the Guidelines

To support the implementation of the Guidelines for School Programs to Prevent Skin Cancer, CDC has developed the following tools and resources.

Fit, Healthy, and Ready to Learn: Sun Safety
In 2002, the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) published this report. Developed with funding from CDC, Division of Adolescent and School Health, it provides guidance to school policymakers on how to integrate sun safety into a coordinated school health program. It helps states, districts, and schools develop policies that would help prevent long-term chronic diseases. In addition, the resulting policy guide complements CDC's school health guidelines, which provide state-of-the-art, scientifically reliable information on what constitutes effective school health programs.

Shade Planning for America's Schools (PDF-1.2MB)
This manual has been created to support school communities in their implementation of the Guidelines for School Programs to Prevent Skin Cancer and, specifically, to help schools create and maintain a physical environment that supports sun safety by ensuring that school grounds have adequate shade.

To further support the school-based skin cancer prevention efforts, next year, CDC will fund state education agencies to collaborate with their state public health departments to conduct demonstration projects for implementing the Guidelines for School Programs to Prevent Skin Cancer. With current resources, CDC will be able to fund 2 or 3 states. The projects will include policy implementation, environmental changes, and/or educational campaigns.

Please note: Some of these publications are available for download only as *.pdf files. These files require Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to be viewed. Please review the information on downloading and using Acrobat Reader software.

*Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided solely as a service to our users. These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at these links.