Helping Kids Learn to Make Healthy Choices

Healthy Choices, a four-week program, developed for grade 7 & 8 students was delivered to approximately 1500 students throughout the Leeds Grenville and Lanark area in 2000. Public Health Nurses used interactive and innovative ways to educate students through a wide variety of activities, games, videos, worksheets and discussions. The topics covered during this four-week program were self-esteem, body image, peer pressure, relationships, abuse, drugs, stress, injury prevention and finally how to use this information to make the healthiest choice possible. The evaluation indicated that Healthy Choices had a statistically significant impact on student's knowledge about the above topics. One student reported learning to “be the way I want to be, not the way someone else wants me to be, and to say no to drugs no matter what anyone says”.

“Be the way I want to be, not the way someone else wants me to be, and to say no to drugs no matter what anyone says”