The School Health Index (SHI): Self-Assessment & Planning Guide was developed by CDC in partnership with school administrators and staff, school health experts, parents, and national nongovernmental health and education agencies to
The SHI has two activities that are to be completed by teams from your school: a self-assessment process and a planning for improvement process.
The SHI currently addresses five health topic areas, including:
It also includes cross-cutting questions, which address policies and practices that apply to all five health topic areas.
Completing the SHI is an important first step toward improving your school's health promotion policies and practices. Your school can then act to implement the School Health Improvement Plan and develop an ongoing process for monitoring progress and reviewing your recommendations for change. Your school's results from using the SHI can also help you include health promotion activities in your overall School Improvement Plan.
It is important to know what the SHI is and what it is not.
| The SHI is a... | and not a... |
|---|---|
| Self-assessment and planning tool | Research or evaluation tool |
| Community-organizing and educational process | Tool for auditing or punishing school staff |
| Focused, reasonable, and user-friendly experience | Long, bureaucratic, painful process |
| Process that identifies no-cost or low-cost changes | Process that requires expensive changes |
| Process that provides justification for funding requests | Process that identifies unfunded mandates |
The SHI is based on CDC's research-based guidelines for school health programs, which identify the policies and practices most likely to be effective in reducing youth health risk behaviors. The SHI contains 8 modules, structured around CDC's eight-component model of coordinated school health:
This model highlights the importance of involving all eight components, which can have a powerful impact on student health behaviors. See the glossary for definitions of these terms.
