Help Us Bring Wellbeing to the Fore in U.S. K-12 Schools

Thank You for your continuing interest in and support for WholeHealthED!

WholeHealthED has traversed the post-COVID era in the company of inspiring colleagues and associates whose collaborations continue to affirm the importance of bringing together people and organizations who are devoted to children’s wellbeing during their years in school

Making our case — i.e., that usually nice-to-have activities like a school garden can offset stress and mental duress — is moving into the awareness of national program and policy leaders.  But at a time of significant change facing schools and children’s health, when the New York Times reminded us in November that “Three-Quarters of U.S. Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese” we clearly need to keep going.

Convening

In April 2024 we were honored to work with the Harkin Institute to co-produce its annual “Harkin on Wellness” symposium around the theme “Wellbeing in Schools.”  At the invitation of former Sen. Tom Harkin, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy MD came to set the stage for the inter-disciplinary panel discussions that blended our focus on whole health learning practices with pediatricians and mental health policy and research leaders.  And for celebrating invited schools around the country supporting their students in whole health learning programs.

Whole Child Wellbeing Research

Our participation since early 2021 in the NIH’s transformational development of Whole Person Health Research led this year to a place on the steering committee of the NCCIH Coalition for Whole Person Health whose member institutions integrate whole health and integrative approaches; primarily for treatment and care.  WholeHealthED continues to advocate for far more research attention to those upstream prevention outcomes of school-based practices that keep healthy whole kids healthy, through learning rather than intervention: So far an untapped, but ready-to-go, proactive public health strategy.

With Major Change Movements

We’ve also joined and endorsed national initiatives seeking to move the needle on kids’ wellbeing: the Alignment for Progress (Kennedy Forum-led national collaborative for mental health); the Milken Institute for Public Health at George Washington and its Center for Public Health (Investing in Whole Health as an Organizational Priority); the NY Fed’s promising “Making Missing Markets” initiative to reimagine financing for community health; and the newly forming “Decade of the Child,” created by our friends at the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives.

Our next phase will build on this network of purposeful connections and reach out to schools and districts.  This goal was serendipitously reinforced last June when Montgomery County MD public schools introduced its new superintendent, Thomas Taylor EdD, who grew up in the county and attended its schools.  From his remarks I remembered only this:

“We need to take care of our kids and their wellbeing before we can even address learning.” 

Please  help us help Dr. Taylor and his school superintendent peers bring student wellbeing to the fore of their purpose.

And through whole health learning strategies impart the readiness mindset young people will need as they grow and mature through K-12 and move into their adult lives in this challenging century.

Your contribution is so important to help us meet the urgency of this post-COVID era.

PLEASE DONATE HERE.

Thanks again for your support!

Taylor