Students are the primary audience for the Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools initiative and are most directly affected by the programs and projects the initiative undertakes. The Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools Steering Committee has worked to ensure that students have an active voice and role in prototype projects emerging from the initiative. Prior to the Summit, hundreds of HISD students shared their impressions, experiences and wishes about creating healthier schools through an online discussion board and in this video. More than two dozen attended the Summit and participated actively as equal partners in all sessions.

A very vocal request by students at the Summit was that HISD create a student version of the School Health Advisory Council (SHAC). They explained that such a body would help ensure that the voice of students is considered as HISD develops and implements its health and wellness policies. In response, Rose Haggerty, Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools Initiative Co-Chair and HISD Manager of Secondary Health and Physical Education, committed to take immediate action on the request, creating a student SHAC that will deal with the topics of food and nutrition, mental and emotional health, media and advertising, physical health, general well-being and curriculum development.

Students will play active roles in the Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools prototype projects launched by the Summit – from taste-testing new healthy food options to participating in personal, web-based wellness tracking, to helping to design a wellness communications campaign for HISD. In fact, student leaders from throughout the district worked together at the 2009 Summer Leadership Institute – where wellness was a key agenda topic for the very first time – to start building a student-led effort to market health to youth. READ MORE

If you are a student who would like to get involved in the Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools initiative click here - we would love to hear your voice!