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| Team South Carolina |
The 2010 South Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows that 15.0% of high school students report being overweight and 16.7% report being obese. District and school officials in Greenville County Schools, the 50th largest school system in the nation with nearly 70,000 students, recognized their students were not immune to this issue. Body Mass Index data, collected in partnership with Furman University in Greenville, SC, revealed that 41.2% of the students in Greenville County Schools were overweight or obese. SC Healthy Schools, South Carolina Department of Education provided training, materials, and technical assistance to Greenville County Schools to develop the district’s own CATCH (Coordinated Approach to Child Health) Training Cadre. CATCH is a coordinated school health program that builds an alliance of parents, teachers, child nutrition personnel, school staff, and community partners to teach children and their families how to be healthy for a lifetime. CATCH focuses on coordinating four components: the Eat Smart school nutrition program, K-5 Classroom curriculum, a Physical Education program, and a Family program. Five Greenville County Schools staff members became certified CATCH trainers. The cadre met several times to review and practice the training segments and attended an online booster session prior to training 50 elementary school health teams to implement CATCH. The school health teams consisted of an administrator, PE teacher, a classroom teacher, and food service manager.
As a result of the training, the elementary schools began to use the CATCH resources to change their environment to reflect a positive wellness environment that is obvious to students, staff, and parents, according to Penny Bostain, Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Consultant with Greenville County Schools. “From the increase in breakfasts served to students across the district to creative planning for healthy fundraisers for schools, CATCH has made an undeniable mark improving the health of students in our district. I have been so impressed when schools finally ‘get’ the benefit of a coordinated health message,” she says. Receiving the CATCH training and materials was the catalyst for a long list of current health initiatives in nutrition and physical activity that Greenville County Schools lacked prior to the implementation of CATCH. The district Food and Nutrition Services has committed to promoting and preparing healthy meals. Schools provide nutrition and physical activity information in their newsletters, websites, and morning announcement programs. Classroom teachers are incorporating nutrition education and physical activity in the academic classes. The response of students, staff, parents, and community partners has been so positive, Greenville County Schools, in partnership with SC Healthy Schools, will expand the CATCH Training Cadre to provide training to the district’s 18 middle schools to begin implementation in the 2011-12 school year. The district will have at their disposal 12 local trainers with the expertise to provide future training and technical assistance to its staff as needed.
Lynn Hammond or Lara Peck
lhammond@ed.sc.gov or lpeck@ed.sc.gov
www.ed.sc.gov/healthyschools
