Standards for Health Education

Standards-based health education helps ensure curricula and instruction are designed to establish, promote, and support health-enhancing behaviors for students in all grade levels – emphasizing planned, sequential learning from pre-kindergarten through grade 12. Health education standards outline what students should know and be able to do by the end of specified grades, serving as a valuable tool for schools in selecting, designing, or revising curricula.1

Multiple professional organizations working in health education have recent or current efforts to update standards for health education. Versions of these standards are available here and here. CDC will be reviewing its tools and resources for schools to determine if updates to CDC materials are needed to reflect any recent or upcoming changes to standards-based health education.

Creating an Effective Health Education Curriculum

Although learning standards provide a framework for health education, teachers, administrators, and policymakers, should also take into account the characteristics of an effective health education curriculum.