9.7: The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model
Public schools have the perfect opportunity to improve the health of the communities they serve. They can become a hub for engagement with families, employees, and other community members. Many of the lifestyle behaviors that adults engage in are habits and norms formed during childhood. So schools may be an optimal setting to reinforce health behaviors such as personal hygiene (for example brushing teeth and handwashing), physical activity, healthy nutrition, and interpersonal skills (such as conflict resolution). Nearly all of the social determinants of health are interconnected with public schools and their programs:
- educational access and quality (including comprehensive health and physical education),
- healthcare access and quality (e.g. school based health centers, school nurses, health insurance for employees, and employee wellness programs),
- neighborhood and built environment (by providing safe physical environments for learning, as well as becoming a community center for other community activities),
- social and community context (with family and community engagement, schools can improve social cohesion and civic participation),
- economic stability (by assisting families in need with school meal programs, and improving future economic stability via student academic success).
Given the far-reaching influence of public education on the social determinants of health, it may seem obvious that public schools are an important setting for public health efforts. However, in order for health promotion in public schools to be truly effective, it needs to be holistic, including policies, procedures, and people from all aspects of the school community. The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) school health promotion model provides a comprehensive framework to implement holistic public health interventions at the local level. See Figure 9.1 below for a diagram of this model.
The WSCC model places the child at the center of the framework, as the children served are the focus of public school education. In the first circle, the model prioritizes a learning environment where students are safe, engaged, supported, challenged and healthy. In order to support both the learning process and overall health of the child, it is recognized that policy, process, and practice will need to be coordinated around these goals. To that end, the WSCC model includes 10 components, surrounded in the outer circle by the community itself. These components are:
- Physical education and physical activity.
- Nutrition environment and services.
- Health education.
- Social and emotional climate.
- Physical environment.
- Health services.
- Counseling, psychological and social services.
- Employee wellness.
- Community involvement.
- Family engagement.
The WSCC model “recognizes that schools and communities have a shared responsibility for the health and education of children and youth”, and that “The relationship between the school and the community affects the entire community, not just the students attending the school”, (Lewallen et al., 2015). The families of children attending the school, the employees who work at the school, and the community members who engage with the school all contribute to and benefit from healthy schools.
The WSCC model is not an intervention itself, but rather the framework that can be used by schools and communities to implement changes at their schools which address the needs of their students, families, employees, and communities. Meeting such broad goals requires the support of school administration at minimum, typically along with a well-organized school health advisory council, and perhaps even a school health coordinator (or a current employee with the appropriate training and educational background who can take on that role). The buy-in of the school administration, staff, and parent groups is ultimately necessary to create meaningful school health policies and implement health-related programming and messaging (Seabert et al., 2021). Below we will examine each of these 10 components in greater detail.