Longtime Health Education Program To Shut Down

— A long-running health education program for elementary students will come to an end in just more than three weeks after reaching thousands of students in Benton and Washington counties and even more children statewide.

Kids for Health was established 17 years ago by Washington Regional Medical Center to provide a health education curriculum for third-graders in area schools. After five years as a hospital-based program, Kids for Health became an independent nonprofit organization with a goal to become a self-supporting, activity-based program for elementary school health education in Arkansas and beyond.

AT A GLANCE

Health, School Performance

• Health coverage helps improve children’s school performance.

• Children who are covered by health insurance positively impact education and future workforce development.

• Children with health insurance are more likely to access health services, have fewer absences and are more likely to pay attention in class and keep up with school activities.

Source: Arkansas Advocates For Families And Children

Organizers’ plan was to get the curriculum approved by the Arkansas Department of Education as one of three choices from which school districts could select. The other two are offered by national textbook publishing companies.

Once on the curriculum list, Kids for Health sold its program to 250 elementary schools, or roughly 44 percent of the state’s elementary schools, said Steve Percival, executive director of Kids for Health.

A lack of stable funding as the program approached a time for updating and an expansion plan that didn’t succeed prompted the decision to shut down, Percival said.

“If we had sold the program to 60 percent to 70 percent of the schools in Arkansas, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Percival said. “We’re not blaming anything. The primary sales channel we picked had the goal to go beyond Arkansas, but we were not able to penetrate those areas.”

Stacia Baughman, 19, of West Fork remembers participating in Kids for Health classes at Holcomb Elementary School from kindergarten to fourth grade. There were lessons on the digestive system, oral health, even time management.

The lessons were on video by the time she reached third grade, although a nurse educator was in the classroom with the students. The videos were not as memorable, she said.

Probably the most memorable class was a kindergarten lesson on the esophagus and what it does, Baughman said. The nurse used a long sock to demonstrate the work of the esophagus. Students pushed a banana in a plastic sealable bag, squeezing it as it went down. The lesson showed how food arrives in the stomach.

“It was really gross looking,” Baughman said.

An expansion six years ago took the program from serving primarily Northwest Arkansas to serving schools statewide. The expansion was paid by a $457,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant, which allowed Kids for Health to develop a video-based health education curriculum for students in kindergarten through sixth grade.

The agency also received grants from the Care Foundation, Cancer Challenge and Arkansas Tobacco Settlement Commission, but it was ultimately not enough to sustain the program.

A stable source of money didn’t develop as the program grew, said Percival, who is the human resources director for Washington Regional but serves as the unpaid executive director of Kids for Health. The organization didn’t have the money to revise and update the curriculum by incorporating more technology for students in time for the state’s 2012 curriculum adoption process.

The curriculum was listed on the Arkansas Department of Education curriculum list in 2005 as an approved health education curriculum for kindergarten through sixth grade. Once approved by the state, schools had the option to select Kids for Health or the two other curricula from national textbook publishers.

A curriculum, once approved by the state, has a six-year life before revisions or updates are necessary to compete in the next selection period. A product that is only on sale every six years is difficult to sustain, Percival said.

“You can’t count on once every six years as an annual revenue stream,” Percival said. “We weren’t prepared to successfully compete in 2012.”

Kids for Health included pre- and post-testing to determine the effectiveness of each lesson. Statistical data collected during the life of the program showed an improvement in health behaviors and knowledge from the lessons taught, said Kandy Johnson, Kids for Health program director.

Carol Stone, one of five nurse educators working for the agency, said she recently encountered a high school student who recognized her from the Kids for Health video shown at the student’s former elementary school.

Of the five part-time staff members, three have found other nurse education positions, one is retiring and the other one is looking for a position.

“The children were learning and grasping information about health,” Stone said. When she joined Kids for Health 15 years ago, nurses traveled to schools in Washington County, loaded with props and often dressed as clowns or other characters. Some Benton County schools were added later.

“Some of the children didn’t own a toothbrush,” Stone said. “We didn’t realize that many kids were being impacted. The teachers won’t realize the impact on kids.”

Johnson said at one time she and the other nurses worked with 8,000 students in a school year in Northwest Arkansas. After the state added the curriculum to the state list, she and the others “logged a lot of miles” working as facilitators for school districts.

“What a gift it’s been to help kids and their parents,” she said.

Schools will now select from other available state-approved curriculum.

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