Every October, educators, health professionals, and communities mark Health Literacy Month which is a time to shine a light on the importance of understanding and using health information to make informed choices. At its core, health literacy is about more than reading a pamphlet or following doctor’s orders. It’s about giving people, including our students, the confidence, knowledge, and skills to access reliable information, ask good questions, weigh options, and take positive steps toward making, and encouraging, health enhancing behaviors.

For schools, this focus couldn’t be more timely. Today’s students are growing up surrounded by a flood of health information from social media trends to wellness influencers to public health messages. This is likely to be a topic that you are considering talking to your students about. Helping students develop the ability to sort fact from fiction, and to apply what they learn to real-life decisions, is a skill that lasts well beyond the classroom.

Here are some practical, engaging activities to try this Health Literacy Month:

Read a blog post (or two). Adam Mullis wrote an awesome post for the SHAPE America blog, entitled 7 Ways to Turn Health Literacy Month Into a School-Wide Celebration. The post includes tips for pitching ideas to your administration, recruiting a team of like-minded people to help you plan, fundraise, and deliver fun and interactive events within your school community, and beyond.

If you appreciate Adam’s joy for promoting all things health as much as I do, then you’ll also appreciate his microblog post Why Your School Needs a Health Fair. In this post he shares the tips that worked for him when he organized ‘Health-A-Paloooza’, a school-wide community health fair designed to increase physical literacy in a fun, engaging way.

Listen to a podcast. At the risk of this becoming an Adam Mullis appreciation post, you’ll love the energy from Adam, Lennie Parham, and Melissa Quigley in the latest School Health Educators Podcast. Award winning educator, administrator and author Lori Reichel Ph. D., created the podcast as a positive forum to share best practices for K-12 health education teachers. In this episode, three members of SHAPE America’s National Health Education Council (HEC) share their mission, projects, ways you can get involved, and the importance of advocating for health education. Also covered is the importance of Health Literacy Month and how you can bring it to life in your school or community!

Print out awesome resources to share with your community. This Health Ed 101 Parent Flyer is just one of the excellent resources created by SHAPE America. This is a colorful overview of what students learn in health education and why it matters. It helps families (and other stakeholders) understand the goals, topics and benefits of health education while addressing common questions about health education class. I have this flyer printed and displayed in our office and I plan on sending it to families in advance of my new cohort of students in the new year.

Here’s the link to SHAPE America’s other health literacy printables. You’ll find materials on inclusive practices in health ed, appropriate practices in health ed for your administrators to look at, plus links to webinars and workshops.

Bring in Guest Speakers. Invite local health professionals such as nurses, dietitians, counselors, or even older students in health-related career pathways, to share how they use health information in their daily work. It gives students role models and real-world applications.

The 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report made recommendations for the health of our youth, including the following: “Connect youth and families to community-based sources of care.” At my school, we invite a local organization to speak with our students, whose services include individual and group counseling, social skills groups, youth development and mentoring programs, health education, and crisis intervention. This opportunity connects our students with support services and also provides youth leadership opportunities within the community.

Invest in your own professional development. In addition to the SHAPE America webinars mentioned above, explore the likelihood of attending the next Health and PE conference*. This Justification Toolkit from SHAPE America is a great resource. It includes tips for speaking with your principal/supervisor, a needs/benefits table to help develop talking points about how attending the national convention will help you meet the needs of your school/district, and a pre-written and customizable justification letter to use when setting up a face-to-face meeting with your supervisor.

If attending a conference isn’t possible, make sure to subscribe to some great newsletters from health educators. I highly recommend Christopher Pepper‘s Teen Health Today. You might also like this newsletter from my good friend Scott Todnem. Another friend of mine, Jeff Bartlett shares great skills-based resources in his regular newsletter. Jeff was also involved in the creation of The HPE Collective, alongside Jordan Manley. It’s a dynamic platform built to serve health and physical educators and another free resource for you to consider.

Whether you’re hosting a guest speaker, sharing a podcast, or just sparking conversations in class, Health Literacy Month is a chance to connect students with skills that will serve them for life. Let’s keep empowering them to make informed, confident, and compassionate choices about their health and the health of those around them.

*If you’re attending NYSAHPERD in November, IAHPERD in December or #SHAPEKC or in March, be sure to come and say hi as I’ll be presenting health-related sessions at each of them.

If you enjoyed this blog post, you might also enjoy:

Helping Students Improve Their Health Literacy by Andy Horne

Five Questions I Asked My Middle School Students This Year by Emily Zien

Introducing The HPE Collective by Jordan Manley