NIH’s Neighborhood Schools

In early September 2024, I had the chance to introduce WholeHealthED and emphasize student wellbeing to the School Health Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, the large suburban county that abuts Washington DC on its northwestern boundary.

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is the state’s largest system, serving some 162,000 students in 140 schools.  The county rolls across a fortuitous landscape of large and interconnected parks, sliced by tributaries of the Potomac River, which is its western boundary, and Rock Creek which winds beautifully down through Washington until reaching the Potomac below Georgetown.

Its schools serve neighborhoods from the urban centers of Silver Spring and Takoma Park in the southeast, to large and diverse suburban communities, to farmland in the north and northwest.  About half of MCPS schools have been designated Green Schools by the state of Maryland.  Montgomery has also been home to my forebearers for longer than I can say.

After a good Zoom meeting last June with Cara Grant PhD, head of Health and Physical Education and Steve Neff, of the Division of Pupil Personnel Services (who invited me to present at the September School Health Council meeting), I explored MCPS’s web-defined landscape looking for components of what we call whole health learning (WHL) practices: gardens, environmental education, expansive physical activities, mindfulness, teaching kitchens.  (Cara is also currently president of SHAPE America, the large national member organization for school health and physical education professionals.)

I had been inspired to reach out to MCPS after viewing the summer welcoming ceremony for the system’s new superintendent, Thomas Taylor (who grew up attending MCPS schools).  During his remarks he noted:

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

After replaying that clip three or four times, I continued surveying MCPS for WHL-related programs and practices.  Like many large systems, MCPS embodies a solid range of activities that fit under a WHL umbrella.  But since they have come into the system sporadically over the years — often at a single principal’s discretion, not as part of a specific unified purpose — they are understandably disconnected and often overlap, with uncertain sustainability.

During the Q&A portion of the health council presentation, I did get an observation I thought might hear: “We already do all that.”  Yes, but…

I was somewhat surprised when I could not find the environmental education program on the MCPS organizational chart.  When I reached the department’s director, he told me the program thrives and is constantly in use at its robust central learning facility in a well-forested section of the county.  But he was not aware of the School Health Council or its meeting.  The Council is a public body with members from the schools, the public, public health, and healthcare (i.e., Kaiser), and is housed in the county’s Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Montgomery County is also home to the expansive headquarter campus of the NIH.  The two organizations apparently never have had occasion to partner, but with circumstances in K-12 education, in whole health, and child mental health and wellbeing evolving rapidly both are essentially exploring – separately – the “how” of Superintendent Taylor’s inspiring call to “take care of kids wellbeing before we can even address learning.” 

NIH has been funding research into areas very related to children’s health:

• Through a national high-priority research network on emotional wellbeing
• Supporting research on the impact on human health from time-in-nature
• Through a research project on “Fostering Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health Among Children in School Settings.”
• As a primary national exponent for the federal commitment to the Food is Medicine movement, in research and in clinical application.
• Through the transformational Whole Person Health initiative, where we work on ensuring that whole health for the whole child is foundational to the initiative.

Evolution: To a Student Wellbeing Council?

The School Health Council may just be beginning to reflect the increasingly diverse and complex needs and changes in roles that MCPS will be considering (like inviting WholeHealthED to present on whole health learning and student wellbeing).  For instance, the District is part of a large national school district network: the Comprehensive Youth Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Approach for Districts Nationwide, a partnership of the AASA, the School Superintendent’s Association (in which Dr. Taylor has been active) and the Jed Foundation, whose programs are designed for teens and young adults.

The intransigent and debilitating after-effects of COVID have been forging new kinds of connections between K-12 educators and child health and mental health enterprises, all bending decidedly toward the schoolyard.   This was a major theme of last April’s annual Harkin on Wellness symposium, this year entitled Wellbeing in Schools, which we co-produced with the Harkin Institute and featured remarks by US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy MD.  The summary is here.

(With several of my own next-gen, with their next-next-gen in tow attending MCPS schools, I admit to a keen interest in Dr. Taylor’s positioning for student wellbeing.)