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Feature Story

Integrating Health Education

By Jill English, PhD, CHES & Susan Russell, MPH, EdD, CHES
R2E2: Russell & English Research & Evaluation
http://www.r2e2evaluation.com

Curriculum integration is a concept that's been around for decades. With increasing emphasis on core academic subjects and improving test scores, curriculum integration has been proposed as a practical solution to including subjects, such as health education, into an already-packed school day. Is curriculum integration the answer? If so, how can it be done successfully? Let's take a look at some of these issues.

Many terms have been used to describe the concept of teaching two or more disciplines at once: curriculum integration, curriculum infusion, interdisciplinary curriculum, and thematic teaching, to name a few. To avoid differentiating between these terms, curriculum integration will be used here to apply to teaching in which content is drawn from two or more subject areas to teach about a particular concept, theme, or topic.

How Can Health Education Be Integrated?

Integration of the subject of health education can be done in two different ways. Health education can be integrated among health topics. Within health education, there are many opportunities to integrate one health topic into another. One example might be integrating the topics of the health consequences of alcohol use and safety. Another example is integrating the topics of environmental health, chronic diseases, and growth and development.

Health education can also be integrated between other subjects to help students develop a broader view of health. For example, in science, when students learn about microorganisms, they can also learn about how to prevent the spread of microorganisms that cause disease. Health education can be integrated into math by having students measure, record, graph, interpret, and predict data about physical activity, heart and respiration rates, and blood pressure.

When Should Health Education Be Integrated?

Because two or more subjects can be integrated, should they be? Integrating health between other subject matter simply because there's no room in the curriculum to teach health as a separate subject is not a valid intellectual reason for integration. This reasoning ignores that students must have mastered the main concepts within each discipline before they can be expected to find meaningful associations between them. Interdisciplinary curriculum will be successful only when students can use the knowledge and skills gained from individual disciplines to solve problems, explore issues, or develop associations common and important to other disciplines. Because two themes can be integrated doesn't mean they should be. For example, one could integrate the history of flying kites (social studies) to poetry about kite flying (language arts). However, if each of these topics is not considered important within its own discipline there is no reason to attempt to integrate it into another discipline.

How can curriculum integration be done successfully? Consider curriculum integration on a continuum. On one end, teachers can integrate within a given math lesson, for example, having students calculate the proportion of their daily diet that consists of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. At the other end of the continuum is the complete integration of two disciplines such as math and health. In between, teachers can integrate health concepts and themes within math lessons and units.

Key Questions to Ask about Integrating Health Education

Two key questions need to be asked prior to deciding whether to integrate health into one or more other subjects. 1) Does it make intellectual sense? 2) Does it make practical sense? Beyond these questions, curriculum integration will be effective only when it includes a topic, concept or theme that lends itself to being studied from two separate disciplines, is valuable to both disciplines individually, and, most importantly, will further the students' understanding of both disciplines in a way that couldn't be accomplished through a single discipline.