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Teachers Play Critical Role in Adolescent Health Promotion Efforts |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Teachers are among the most important influences in the lives of school-aged children, yet relatively little emphasis has been placed on examining the potential role general academic teachers may play in facilitating adolescent health promotion efforts, according to a study conducted by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and published in the Journal of School Health. The study results indicate that teachers provide valuable information to school personnel about what health issues are important to adolescents, in particular, because they hear feedback from adolescents on a daily basis. "We found that teachers agreed that schools were an important venue for discussing and providing health messages," says Alwyn T. Cohall, MD, associate professor of clinical Sociomedical Sciences, director of the Harlem Health Promotion Center, and lead author. "However, they expressed concern about their ability to handle mental health, behavioral health, and reproductive health problems, and desire additional staff development workshops to address these needs." Seventy percent of teachers stated they were actively approached by students one to three times per semester or more with personal problems or health concerns. "Our study shows that relying solely on certified health education teachers to impart health messages and facilitate referrals for services would appear rather limiting given these contextual realities," noted Dr. Cohall. These schools had a cumulative enrollment of approximately 4,600 students, and an active school-based health clinic on site, providing a wide range of free physical and mental health services to students during school hours, including primary and reproductive healthcare. More than three quarters of teachers were interested in receiving staff development on problems with peers (77.5%) and emotional or mental health (77.3%).
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