Health education project targets elementary grades

Decisions about health issues such as smoking and nutrition often are formed early. With that in mind, two Mississippi State professors are developing a health education resource inventory for some state public school students.

Barry Hunt and Jeff Schulz, both of the Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Sport, are working with the American Cancer Society's Mid-South Division to evaluate the level of health education training for elementary teachers in an 11-county region.

The project is surveying schools to discover how health education issues currently are taught for K-6 students in northeast and central Mississippi. Some 50 schools will be surveyed in Calhoun, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Clay, Itawamba, Lee, Lowndes, Monroe, Pontotoc, Oktibbeha, and Webster counties.

Funded by an ACS Special Project Fund Award, the MSU researchers' work will be a first step in developing school-based programs aimed at increasing the effectiveness of elementary school health education.

"Research shows that patterns of behavior are set early," Schulz said. "There's been a decrease in the age of initiation for smoking and other risky health behaviors. Our premise is that if you're going to do primary prevention, you need to educate prior to the age of initiation."