Health and Wellness Education
Comprehensive Health Education
Health Education provides students with the knowledge and skills they need to be healthy throughout their lifetime. The intent of a comprehensive health education program is to motivate students to maintain and improve their health, prevent disease, and avoid or reduce health related risk behaviors.
Florida State Statute 1003.42 (2)- Required Instruction
(n)1.Comprehensive age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate K-12 health education that addresses concepts of community health, consumer health, environmental health, and family life, including;
Mental and emotional Health
Injury prevention and safety
Internet safety
Nutrition
Personal health
Prevention and control of disease
Substance use and abuse.
Prevention of child sexual abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking
2. The health education curriculum for students grades 7 through 12 shall include a teen dating violence and abuse component that includes, but is not limited to, the definition of dating violence and abuse, the warning signs of dating violence and abusive behavior, the characteristics of healthy relationships, measures to prevent and stop dating violence and abuse, and community resources available to victims of dating violence and abuse.
3. The health education curriculum for students in grades 6 through 12 shall include an awareness of the benefits of sexual abstinence as the expected standard and the consequences of teenage pregnancy.
Health and Wellness Required Instruction
Health Education Related Rule Information
School districts are required to use the online Florida Required Instruction Reporting Portal available at https://flrequiredinstruction.org. By December 1 of each year, each school district must submit a district implementation plan for the three health topics of 1) Resiliency Education: Civic and Character Education and Life Skills Education, 2) Substance Use and Abuse Education and 3) Child Trafficking Prevention Education. Use of the portal does not affect the content districts are required to submit, only the method. Plans are still required to be posted on district webpages.
By July 1 of each year, each school district must submit a report that describes how instruction was provided for required instruction topics during the previous school year.
Civic and Character Education and Life Skills Education Through Resiliency Education Related Rule Information
Civic and Character Education and Life Skills Education Through Resiliency Education
School districts must annually provide a minimum of five (5) hours of data driven instruction to students in grades 6-12 related to civic and character education and life skills education through resiliency education using the health education standards adopted in Rule 6A-1.09401, F.A.C., Student Performance Standards.
The instruction for youth mental and emotional health will advance each year through developmentally appropriate instruction and skill building and must address, at a minimum, the following topics:
Strategies specific to demonstrating resiliency through adversity, including the benefits of service to the community through volunteerism.
Strategies to develop healthy characteristics that reinforce positive core values and foster resiliency such as:
a. Empathy, perseverance, grit, gratitude, and responsibility
b. Critical thinking, problem solving, and responsible decision making.
c. Self-awareness and self-management
d. Mentorship and citizenship
e. Honesty
Recognition of the signs and symptoms of mental health concerns
4. Promotion of resiliency to empower youth to persevere and reverse the harmful stigma of mental health by reframing the approach from mental health education to resiliency education.
5. Strategies to support a peer, friend, or family member through adversity
6. Prevention of suicide
7. Prevention of the abuse of and addiction to alcohol, nicotine, and drugs
8. Awareness of local and community resources and the process for accessing assistance
Florida Standards for Health Education
The Florida Standards for Health Education are based upon established health behavior theories, models, and evidence-based research, as well as best practices. Florida’s Health Education standards include the following:
Core Concepts
Internal and External Influence
Accessing Information
Interpersonal Communication
Decision Making
Goal Setting
Self-Management
Advocacy
Character Education
Substance Use and Abuse
The standards are structured by Standards and Benchmarks. The Standard is a general statement that identifies what the student is expected to achieve. The Benchmark identifies what the student will know and be able to do by the end of each of the grade.
Human Trafficking Awareness
Human Trafficking, under both federal and Florida law, is defined as the transporting, soliciting, recruiting, harboring, providing or obtaining of another person for transport; for the purposes of forced labor, domestic servitude or sexual exploitation using force, fraud and/or coercion. Human trafficking is modern slavery.
There are approximately 30 million people enslaved throughout the world with 2.5 million located right here in the United States.
Many of these victims are lured with false promises of financial or emotional security; instead, they are forced or coerced into commercial sex (prostitution), domestic servitude or other types of forced labor.
Any minor under the age of 18 who is induced to perform a commercial sex act is a victim of human trafficking according to U.S. law, regardless of whether there is force, fraud or coercion. Increasingly, criminal organizations, such as gangs, are luring children from local schools into commercial sexual exploitation or trafficking.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, every two minutes a child is trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation in the United States.
If you suspect a child is a victim, please call the Florida Abuse Hotline at 1-800-96-ABUSE or 911.
If you See Something, Say Something - 1-855-FLA-SAFE (1-855-352-7233)
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children CyberTipline
National Human Trafficking Hotline -1-888-373-7888
BeFree Textline Text "BeFree" (233733)
For more information and resources, please visit the FLDOE Human Trafficking webpage: Human Trafficking.
Florida Statute - Human Trafficking
Mollie Vega, Director-Secondary Programs
Vega.Mollie@brevardschools.org
321-633-1000 ext. 11310
Danielle O'Reilly, Content Specialist
K-12 Health/PE, Driver Education, and JROTC
oreilly.danielle@brevardschools.org
321-633-1000 ext. 11387