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 continues to traverse 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 actually offset stress and mental duress — is moving into the awareness of national program and policy leaders.  But at a time of disruptive and significant change, children’s health and school lives remain intertwined in their discouraging and persistent status:

• The New York Times reminded us in November 2024 that “Three-Quarters of U.S. Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese.”
• In March 2025, Education Next reported that the latest Nation’s Report Card, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP: “… dashed hopes that U.S. students might have finally closed pandemic learning gaps.”

We clearly need to keep pushing for new measures that empower children through guided, hands-on whole health learning which can strengthen their own wellbeing and in turn support academics and social harmony at school.

Convening the Interdisciplinary Community

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 to a position on the steering committee of the NCCIH Coalition for Whole Person Health, whose member institutions engage in research and clinical care with whole health,  integrative and lifestyle medicine approaches.  WholeHealthED continues to advocate for far more research attention to the formidable and demonstrable upstream prevention outcomes we see in whole health learning practices that keep healthy kids healthy: through learning rather than intervention.

So far it is a mature but untapped, ready-to-go, proactive public health strategy.

Aligning 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 Federal Reserve’s support for a promising “Making Missing Markets” initiative to reimagine financing for community health; including Investing in Flourishing for Youth.
• The newly forming “Decade of the Child,” created by our friends at the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives.

Next in 2025:  Despite the very serious disruption in national foundational education and health science organizations, we 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 said 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 superintendent peers across the country bring student wellbeing to the fore, and core, of their purpose.

And through whole health learning strategies impart a readiness and 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 by creating inventive sustainable partnerships and collaborations.

PLEASE DONATE HERE

Thanks again for your support!

Taylor