Getting Started on Your School Health and Well-Being Action Plan

Before creating your action plan, we recommend taking some time to review these tips for planning school health and well-being initiatives. Have you already:

• Formed a diverse team of students, school staff, families and community partners?
• Engaged your school community to identify your school’s unique strengths and needs?

To create a Comprehensive Healthy Schools action plan:

• consider your school’s unique strengths and needs.
• include a wide variety of school, classroom and student level activities.
• address a range of topics, that together support improved health and well-being.
• involve students, staff, families and community partners to identify strategies that are the best fit for your school community.

Sample Comprehensive Action Plan

Action Plan Template

Choose from these Sample Action Plan Ideas

These sample action plans can help you get started with planning well-being initiatives in your school.
Choose from the activities listed and/or engage students, staff, families and other community partners to come up with ideas to address your school’s unique needs.

• Drugs and Alcohol
• Healthy Eating
• Healthy Growth and Development
• Personal Safety and Injury Prevention
• Physical Activity
• Promoting Positive Mental Health and Well-Being
• Promoting Smoke-Free Schools
• Sun Safety
• Health Unit Initiatives

Promoting Positive School Climate

When creating your action plan, include strategies that promote a positive school climate, regardless of the health topic you are focusing on.

A positive school climate is an important part of a healthy school. It exists when all members of the school community:

• feel safe, included, and accepted
• actively promote positive behaviours and interactions.

Potential strategies could include:

• promotion of healthy relationships
• encouraging positive, inclusive and respectful behaviour, and activities that develop living skills.
• adopting a strength-based approach that supports increasing student's Developmental Assets. School staff play a key role in helping to build students developmental assets – the more assets children have, the less likely they are to engage in risky behaviours and the more likely they are to be successful.

For more information on promoting a positive school climate refer to the Ministry of Education website: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/climate.html

For support creating your action plan, contact your School Health public health nurse.