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Help your students overcome what holds them back from making health-promoting choices

This is an excerpt from Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Secondary Health Education 2nd Edition With Web Resource by Sarah Benes,Holly Alperin.

At its core, a skills-­based approach to health education is one that emphasizes skill development over knowledge acquisition. The 2024 SHAPE America National Health Education Standards shift focus away from giving students lots of new content and information, instead allowing them to develop the skills and abilities needed to lead a life that moves ­toward health and well-­being. The skills of the National Health Education Standards include the following (SHAPE Amer­i­ca 2025):

• Accessing valid and reliable resources
• Analyzing influences
• Interpersonal communication
• Decision-­making
• Goal-­setting
• Practicing health be­hav­iors
• Advocacy

We know from health be­hav­ior theory that knowledge alone ­will not change be­hav­iors. Knowing is not, on its own, ­going to help us change be­hav­iors or adopt new ones. Just think—­how often do you engage in a be­hav­ior or be­hav­iors that you know ­aren’t the “healthiest” option? We all do sometimes! But we ­aren’t ­doing it ­because we ­don’t know better; it is usually ­because other ­factors are, in ­those moments, influencing our be­hav­iors.

The reverse is also true. While visiting a high school health education class during a student teaching practicum observation, one of the authors saw students working through the following scenario. Students ­were asked to identify the action they would take if they saw a friend unresponsive ­after drinking at a party. Their options ­were (a) do nothing, (b) give the friend coffee, (c) call 9-1-1, or (d) call their parents. Students all chose ­either option (a) or (b)—­even though they knew that the right answer was to call 9-1-1. They knew what the right option was, but they admitted that they ­wouldn’t choose that option in real life ­because they feared getting in trouble. Again, knowing what they should do was not the same as what they would do.

As health educators, we need to provide space for students to consider their realities and engage in thoughtful conversation about what supports and resources ­will help or encourage their ability to make health-­promoting choices and what barriers might prevent them from making ­those choices. On an individual level, perhaps the students needed more confidence in their ability to advocate or to identify and weigh options in decision-­making, or maybe they needed more self-­efficacy in communicating with parents or the police. No ­matter what it was that ­these students needed, it ­wasn’t the knowledge about the health-­promoting choice; they needed something ­else to make the health-­promoting decision in this situation. When we teach from a skills-­based approach, we are keeping ­these other considerations at the forefront in order to help our students overcome the barriers that may be holding them back from making the health-­promoting choice.

In fact, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (in its 2024 “Characteristics of Effective Health Education Curriculum”) and the World Health ­Organization (in its 2003 Skills for Health document and in its 2024 “FRESH Strategic Plan 2024-2026”) promote this approach. Also, research examining effective health education programs reveals that skill development is a key ele­ment of their efficacy. More support for this approach is found in lit­er­a­ture discussing 21st ­century skill development. The skills taught in health education are transferable to all areas of students’ lives (including other academic subjects).

Alignment with the National HE Standards means that the skills become the emphasis of the curriculum. They frame not only the written curriculum but its implementation and assessment as well. In a skills-­based approach, your goal is to support the development of skills that ­will aid students in leading health-­promoting lives now and in the ­future. In practice, ­these skills become the units of instruction, and the traditional topic areas become the context through which students learn and develop the skills. While some information does need to be taught in the health classroom, the best use for this information is as a means for developing the skills and supporting the students in applying the information to their lives rather than being something taught for the sake of students’ knowing about a topic. We encourage you to include functional information that aids students in determining the most health-­promoting path for them (considering impacts on self and ­others) and that guides them ­toward health and well-­being, rather than focusing on increasing students’ knowledge of multiple risk ­factors or negative outcomes of poor be­hav­ior. For example, instead of offering units on nutrition, drugs and alcohol, and ­mental health, you could offer units on analyzing influences, decision-­making, and advocacy that discuss topics such as how to analyze the influence of peers, culture, and ­family on dietary practices, or how to set a goal for managing one’s time that reduces stress and helps students prioritize commitments. You still would be covering the same topics, but you would be delivering the information in such a way that students ­will apply it during skill practice and ­performance. This switch ensures not only that the skills are emphasized but also that the curriculum is designed to support students’ development of skill proficiency as a primary purpose of health education.

More Excerpts From Lesson Planning for Skills-Based Secondary Health Education 2nd Edition With Web Resource

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