At a glance
- Parents play a crucial role in supporting their children’s health and learning at school.
- When parents are engaged in their children’s school activities, children get better grades, choose healthier behaviors, and have better social skills.
Overview
Parent engagement makes it more likely that children and adolescents will avoid unhealthy behaviors. These include sexual risk behaviors, and tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use.
Did you know?
Parent engagement in schools is defined as parents and school staff working together to support and improve the learning, development, and health of children and adolescents.
Drawing from research and best practices from schools nationwide, CDC created a strategies document. It gives schools concrete ways to engage parents in school health.
Aspects of parent engagement
The document gives tips for all three aspects of parent engagement:
- Connecting with parents.
- Engaging parents in school health activities.
- Sustaining parent engagement in school health.
Connect
This section describes what schools can do to establish a good foundation for engaging parents in school health, such as:
- Creating a vision for parent engagement.
- Preparing school staff to work with parents.
- Assessing and improving the school's strategies for involving parents.
- Assessing what parents and families need to be more involved in school health.
Engage
This section offers ideas for getting parents actively engaged in school health activities, such as:
- Providing parents with information and skills to support healthy attitudes, behaviors, and environments.
- Encouraging parents to be part of decision making at school.
- Ensuring regular and effective two-way communication.
- Offering a wide variety of volunteer opportunities.
- Creating health education activities that parents and students can do together at home.
- Working with community groups that can benefit students and families.
Sustain
This section identifies solutions for common challenges in keeping parents involved, such as:
- Finding meaningful ways that busy parents can be involved.
- Training staff to work well with parents.
- Solving conflicts in scheduling and transportation.
- Overcoming language and cultural barriers.
- Ensuring administrative and financial support.
Who should read this publication?
Download material
This publication is designed for school administrators, teachers, nurses, support staff, parents, and others interested in promoting parent engagement. Each of these audiences has important roles and responsibilities in engaging parents in school health activities.