Tools & Best Practices

Why reinvent the wheel? 
Use these tools to help you implement school wellness policies and learn best practices from programs that have worked. 

Tools

• LiveWell Colorado School Health Assessment (English) and  LiveWell Colorado School Health Assessment (Spanish)
  These assessments will help you query students about their health activities.  

• Alliance for a Healthier Generation
  This partnership between the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation offers information, tools and resources for schools.  

• CDC Healthy Schools, Healthy Youth
  Compiled by the CDC, Healthy Schools, Healthy Youth offers a variety of tools, assessments and other resources for schools.  

• Colorado After School Network Youth Development Institute
  This group offers free online professional development training for front line youth service providers.  

• Colorado Department of Education School Wellness Policy Toolkit
  Compiled by the CDE, this toolkit offers step-by-step instructions for implementation of local school wellness policies.

• Partnering for Success
  This brochure offers information on how health departments work and how best to work with them.
   
• Kaiser Permanente's School Wellness Planning Document, November 2005
  This comprehensive document, prepared by Kaiser Permanente, offers recommended policies and tools for implementing them.

Best Practices

• Arkansas' Obesity and School Body Mass Index Initiative
  Learn more about Arkansas' Act 1220, which mandates that parents are provided with an annual Body Mass Index (BMI) by age of their child, as well as an explanation of what BMI means and health effects associated with obesity.  

• Facilitating Change in School Health: Qualitative Study of Schools' Experiences Using the School Health Index
  This article describes the results of a research study examining school staff and community members’ experiences working with the CDC’s School Health Index.  

• National Cancer Institute Research Tested Interventions
  This site showcases a listing of evidence-based programs and interventions that worked.  

• Shape up Somerville
  This website describes a three-year CDC-funded environmental change intervention designed to prevent obesity in culturally diverse, high-risk, early-elementary school children.