ACHIEVING A HEALTHY FUTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN, SCHOOLS, HEALTH SYSTEMS & STATES

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Pre-K & Adult Policies: Federal & State

We would love nothing more than to have policies introduced simultaneously for children ages 0-5 and for adults, alongside K-12 students, with Healthy Students Healthy State.  The impact together would be very powerful. 

However, it is important to focus on the most politically and financially viable strategies first.  Then we will have a foundation of growing public support among students, their families, health professionals, educators, and many others affected by Healthy Students Healthy State, to continue building upon. 

Asking too much of the public too soon, before they understand the situation adequately, can backfire.  For example, both K-12 and broader policies must factor in, that “MAGA” and other families do not want to be “nanny-stated” about what to eat and drink, or told how to parent.

As a result, our current strategy is to focus first on developing support for and starting to implement Healthy Students Healthy State, in K-12 schools.

Then, as Healthy Students Healthy State is rolled out and begins improving children’s health and positively impacting families statewide, public support for population-wide health promotion outside K-12 schools will grow, too.

Adult Policies including Parents & K-12

The most effective school-based strategies to improve children’s health include “parental components.”  In other words, K-12 curriculum and instruction should recognize that parents and family life have a huge impact on student health and behavior.  By including parents and siblings in the learning design, schools can have much more impact on student health habits.

School-based strategies also provide a foundation for follow-on policies for adults. Healthy habits developed K-12 lay much better groundwork for adult adherence to prevention (& treatment) policies in adulthood.  Those early health habits develop a much higher likelihood of having and maintaining habits (and reducing health costs) much later in life.

Local Wellness Policy Plans

School local wellness policy (LWP) plans to improve health among students and staff should be developed and continually improved with the assistance of School Health Advisory Councils (SHACs), including parents. 

Healthy Students Healthy State even provides about $50,000-$100,000 annually to each school to implement its local wellness policy, with input from parents.  This covers unique costs for each school identified in the school’s LWP, beyond the compensation of the school’s physical & health educators and school counselors & nurses.  This could range from facilities needs to school programs with community partners to after-school sports and other activities, etc.

Building Support for Adult Health Policies that Reinforce School Health & Wellness

Population-wide K-12 preventive education builds a foundation of support for other pro-health policies. 

It raises the awareness of students & their parents & communities, as well as of the general taxpaying & voting public, about the very negative personal & family as well as financial & tax impact of unhealthy behavior. 

For example, instead of soda taxes being perceived primarily as “nanny-state” interference in our lives, an increasing proportion of the public would understand the health benefits of prevention.  Many would be able to balance arguments for absolute food freedom and supposedly lower cost unhealthy food, with evidence that the public would be healthier and financially stronger by disincentivizing unhealthy food and beverages, such as with “soda taxes”.

This argument is made much stronger, when soda or other taxes on unhealthy food & beverages are dedicated to child- and health-related programs with strong public support. 

For example, in Philadelphia soda taxes fund preschool education, and in Seattle they fund early learning and fruit & vegetable purchases for lower-income children, as well as other programs—and taxpayers have continued to support the taxes. 

However, in the case of soda taxes or bans in Chicago and New York, which were not dedicated to fund programs strongly supported by the public, initial support faded quickly into opposition, and the policies were soon dropped.

We are already seeing some movement in this direction with the merger of Make America Great Again (MAGA) with Make America Healthy Again (MAHA).

In addition, as health care costs take an increasing share of both federal budgets and household incomes, both the public and our political leaders will become increasingly desperate for solutions—and open to strategies which they might not have accepted in the past.

Federal:  MAGA, MAHA, & K-12 – Chronic Disease Prevention

With the merger of some of RFK Jr. et al’s priorities into MAGA as Make America Healthy Again, the Trump administration seems likely to focus a lot of attention on chronic disease prevention.  In fact, MAHA is already starting to influence MAGA policy priorities in red-states, including Arizona.

This should help grow support for Healthy Students Healthy State, and may provide an opportunity for early federal support.  [link to new CMS/Medicaid Potential Role page]

Based on the new US Department of Health & Human Services leadership’s stated priorities, the federal government could help improve student health and wellness in a number of ways including:

  • Encouraging or even requiring state Medicaid agencies (such as AHCCCS in Arizona) to do much more for prevention of chronic disease, ideally including using a significant portion of federal Medicaid funds for early, cost-effective, evidence-based preventive education innovations such as Healthy Students Healthy State.
  • Adding warning labels to packaging for foods and beverages that are known to substantially increase health risks, as is being done already in a number of countries.

“Stop allowing beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to use their food stamps to buy soda or processed foods. Nine percent of all SNAP funding goes to sweetened drinks, according to 2011 data. It’s nonsensical for U.S. taxpayers to spend tens of billions of dollars subsidizing junk that harms the health of low-income Americans.”

  • Working with the USDA to increase crop subsidies for fruit and vegetables, which receive less than 2% of federal farm subsidies, alongside the large traditional subsidies for crops such as corn, wheat and soybeans. (Hopefully, tariffs on imported fruits and vegetables can be minimized, to make them more affordable and to not disincentivize eating healthier foods.)

Children Ages 0-5 Policies

State: Pre-Kindergarten Chronic Disease Prevention

Arizona preschool attendance is very low, with the state ranked 43rd, and only 17% of 4-year olds enrolled compared to 44% nationally.

In addition, the state agency for children ages 0-5, First Things First, has a budget dependent on tobacco taxes.  While the good news is that smoking is going down, the bad news for Arizona’s youngest is that the small amount of existing state support for them is under increasing downward pressure.

It would be ideal to have children developing healthier habits from birth (and even from pregnancy) onward, providing a strong start before enrolling in K-12 schools. 

For example, a reform in federal WIC policy (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) in 2009 upgraded nutrition standards for participating children ages 2-4, reducing child obesity among children in WIC for at least five years. 

However, focusing on the youngest children is particularly challenging in Arizona, since there is so little public funding for preschool and for early development generally.

But if evidence-based cost-effective strategies can be identified to improve these youngest children’s health before entering the K-12 system, it may be possible to add those strategies alongside Healthy Students Healthy State, including similar results-based funding from health sources.  If these strategies are compelling and accountable enough in their impact and ROI, HSHS funders may decide to help fund these early childhood strategies as well.

More Info: CMS/Medicaid Potential Role