Brenda Z. Greene promoting NSBA's school health programs.

Greene, who died Friday, joined NSBA’s staff in 1983 and was named Director of School Health Programs in 1987 when the organization received its first funding award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Adolescent and School Health. She remained in the position until her retirement in July 2011.

NSBA’s Executive Director Anne L. Bryant said Greene “helped NSBA become the lead education organization on school health issues.” Working with grant funding from CDC and other agencies, Greene worked in partnership with state school board associations and “helped others to be pro-active within their states, communities, and local school districts.”

“Brenda was an extraordinary leader on behalf of school board members and children, and a tireless advocate for healthy students and healthy schools,” Bryant said. “Starting more than three decades ago, she raised the issues few were willing to even discuss, such as HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, and tobacco use. Her presence will be missed.”

While investigators continue to piece together what happened on that fateful day, the incident highlights the importance of addressing food allergies among school-aged children, which has risen by double digits in the last decade.   

“Since children spend a considerable amount of time in school, it is inevitable that emergencies, such as allergic reactions, will occur in the school,” said Anne L. Bryant, NSBA’s executive director. ”As school boards strive to improve the academic success of students, they cannot lose sight of the health challenges some students face and the need to prevent and effectively respond to health emergencies in school.”

Toward this end, NSBA has published “Safe at School and Ready to Learn: A Comprehensive Policy Guide for Protecting Students with Life-threatening Food Allergies“ to help school leaders establish policies and practices that support the safety, well-being, and academic success of students with life-threatening food allergies.  

Developed with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and, in response to the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act , this publication emphasizes the role of schools in protecting students with life-threatening food allergies.

The guide focuses on the need for schools to partner with families, and healthcare providers in identifying and supporting individual student needs and preparing management plans. Further, it provides recommendations on following medication protocols; establishing a coordinated system to prevent and respond to food allergy-related emergencies across the school environment; communicating with and educating parents, students, and school personnel; and monitoring and evaluating policies and practices.

The publication also includes a checklist for schools to assess the extent to which the guide’s components are included in food allergy policies and practices being developed and implemented; sample state and local education policies; as well as a glossary of commonly used terms and a list of resources related to food allergies.

To access this publication online and for further information on addressing food allergies in schools, visit NSBA’s Food Allergies & Schools webpage.

The case was initiated in 2009, when “R.K,” a student with Type I diabetes, was in kindergartener in Scott County, Ky. Initially, R.K. needed insulin injections during the school day, but later he began using an insulin pump that required accurate input of certain dietary information.

The NSBA-KSBA brief noted that the Kentucky Board of Nursing had advised schools not to delegate the responsibility for monitoring insulin pumps to other staff. With this recommendation in mind, the district told R. K.’s parents that he could attend one of two elementary with onsite nurses. However, the parents said the district had an obligation to educate R.K. at his neighborhood school, and sued.

A district court judge ruled in June that R.K. had no “absolute right” to attend his neighborhood school, and the parents appealed the decision to the 6th Circuit.

The NBSA-KSBA brief says there is a fundamental difference between an “educational placement” decision, concerning the types of services and supports offered to a student, and the “physical location” where those services are provided.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) requires that students be educated in “the least restrictive environment,” the brief says. However, in the Kentucky case, NSBA and KSBA said, “the student does not allege he has been removed from education with his non-disabled peers; his sole allegation is that he was denied assignment to his neighborhood school.”

NSBA General Counsel Francisco M. Negrón Jr. said Section 504 does not require districts to educate children with disabilities in their neighborhood school.

“The court should not read into Section 504 a requirement that a school district be required to provide all disability-related services to students in their neighborhood schools,” Negrón said.

“In addition to minimizing the role of the individualized education program staffing process, such a ruling could needlessly increase costs by minimizing the flexibility of school districts in managing limited resources.”

NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant said a decision against the school district threatens the “common practice of deploying the districts’ resources in a many that is both fiscally responsible and educationally sound.”

However, family involvement in schools doesn’t always come easy.  For one, schools and parents often have a different understanding of what that involvement should look like.  In addition, there can be cultural and language barriers and other issues such as lack of knowledge about how the school system works that make it difficult to get families involved.  So what can school board members do to seize opportunities and address challenges to involving families in schools?

A new National School Boards Association (NSBA) publication, Families as Partners: Fostering Family Engagement for Healthy and Successful Students, presents an interesting suggestion.   According to the publication, from a school district perspective, family engagement in health issues can be an excellent first step toward getting families involved in schools as they are often more willing to address health issues than potentially intimidating academic issues.  In fact, a recently published Center for Public Education (CPE) document shows a similar thread and relays that an effective means to getting families at the door can be a targeted involvement to solve a particular problem – like poor attendance or behavior.

At first it can seem overwhelming to involve families in schools as families comes with differing views and expectations regarding the school system and their children’s learning.  But the benefits outweigh the challenges and ultimately improve student achievement!  So in thinking of ways to address challenges and seize opportunities to involving families, BoardBuzz would like you to check out some important strategies outlined in the documents above:

• Recognize that all families, regardless of income, education, or cultural background are involved in their children’s learning and want their children to do well;
• Investigate how families want to be involved and how teachers want families to be involved;
• Address family involvement through a coordinated school health framework, which includes a family involvement component;
• Foster district-wide strategies including reviewing policies and procedures to effectively engage families;
• Ask what families need to know to be involved and how well your district and schools are meeting those needs;
• Build the capacity of your board and staff to strengthen family engagement; and
• Continue to survey or track the effects of involvement.

To learn more about steps to take to accomplish some of those strategies, view Families as Partners.  In addition, check out NSBA’s new Family Engagement in School Health webpage to access relevant resources such as sample policies, surveys, and tools created by NSBA to help school leaders better engage families.

How is your school district addressing family involvement?  What have been some of the outcomes?  Drop us a comment!

Families as Partners: Fostering Family Engagement for Healthy and Successful Students, provides an overview of this critical component of student and school success and offers guidance, strategies, and resources for developing and implementing effective family engagement policies and practices.

According to the document, family engagement in schools has been shown to reduce risky behaviors and improve academic achievement and attitudes about school among students.

The publication also suggests that building connections around school and children’s health issues not only serves as a less intimidating entry point for families, but can reap multiple benefits.

“Family engagement is important to a positive school climate, as well as, to the development of promising school health policies and practices that benefit all students and prepare them for a healthy and successful future,” said Anne L. Bryant, NSBA’s executive director.

It should be noted that families come in all shapes and sizes, and the use of the word family is an all-inclusive generic term. Regardless of their makeup, according to the document, “families and school staff share the responsibility to counter unhealthy influences and help students lead healthy, productive lives.”

And coordinated school health—an eight-step model that the CDC developed— is a sensible way to address risky behaviors among students. Not surprisingly, one of the key components in the CDC coordinated school health framework is family involvement.

Families as Partners highlights a handful of well-regarded strategies to bolster family involvement, including the model developed by noted Johns Hopkins University sociology professor Joyce L. Epstein.

Among the steps a district should take is a review of their own policies on family involvement. Chances are districts can build on their existing efforts to address family engagement in health, nutrition, and safety.

In tandem with an internal review, is an external strategy to bring families into the fold, whether it’s through community meetings, surveys, standing committees, or other opportunities where two-way dialogue can occur.

Besides the Families as Partners document, more smart tips and best practices, including a fact sheet on health and learning, sample family engagement policies, and sample surveys to engage families, can be found on the new family engagement webpage on NSBA’s website.

From Arizona, which apparently is the first state to require student athletes to pass a test based on a traumatic brain injury video they must watch, to Virginia, which became one of nearly two dozen states to write concussion prevention among students into law in the past six months.

In the August edition of ASBJ, I tackled the issue of youth concussions, which remains a largely misunderstood injury.  Among one of the more intriguiging revelations in the story: restricting physical exertion of injured student is only half the battle– in fact, it’s even less.

“We spend 90 percent of our time in the clinic, around how to return that kid to school,” Gerald Gioa, chief of neuropsychology at  Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C., told me. “The sports side is the easy part. I can easily restrict sports it’s not so easy to restrict the academic side.”

To learn more about this serious, yet highly preventable injury, read the August cover story, online for free for a limited time.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

The new research, which surveyed some 38,000 parents, suggests that roughly 6 million or 1 in every 12 American kids below the age of 18 suffer from food allergies.

This is up from a 2009 estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which besides pegging the  prevalence of childhood allergies at 1 in every 26 children, noted that this figure had risen by 18 percent between 1997 and 2007.

What’s going on? No one can say for sure. And while there is some skepticism about the rigor and objectivity of the study’s methodology,  the report does provide some valuable insight into the severity and misery that kids afflicted with food allergies endure.

For instance, roughly 40 percent of the families surveyed reported their children had experienced a serious reaction such as anaphylaxis or wheezing when exposed to the food allergen. This is double the rate of what previous studies have estimated.

This latest study, conducted by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, did bolster what other research has determined: food allergy symptoms and prevalence peak in preschoolers before gradually subsiding, although teenagers, especially boys, are highly susceptible to potentially life-threatening reactions—likely because of their tendency to take risks.

To learn more about food allergies, check out this free webcast that NSBA’s School Health Programs presented in November and the ASBJ story that followed.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

The report language states: “New Nutrition Requirements for the School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs.-The Committee notes that FNS [Food Nutrition Services] has responded to the actions required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, P.L. 111-296. The Committee urges restraint and practical timelines for implementing new national nutrition standards in the school breakfast and lunch programs. As many of the representatives in states and local school districts have cautioned, an overly aggressive implementation schedule and unrealistic demands on changes in nutrient content can lead to burdensome costs, estimated to be about $7 billion over 5 years. Therefore, the Committee directs FNS to issue a new proposed rule that would not require an increase in the cost of providing school meals.”

Read more about school nutrition issues at: www.nsba.org/Advocacy/Key-Issues/SchoolNutrition.

The CSH model, an approach recommended by the CDC for improving students’ health and learning, has eight critical, interrelated components: health education; physical education; health services; mental health and social services; nutrition services; healthy and safe environment; family and community involvement; and staff wellness.

“This project will give school board members and administrators access to targeted information and assistance to facilitate district progress toward the CSH approach, including a CSH webpage with links to the best resources and to useful webinars,” says NSBA School Health Director Brenda Z. Greene. “By using the CSH systemic approach, schools can increase their capacity to eliminate gaps and reduce redundancies in meeting student needs; build partnerships and teamwork among health and education professionals; and focus efforts on helping students engage in protective, health-enhancing behaviors and avoid risk behaviors – all of which are aligned with school leaders’ goals to increase student achievement.”

NSBA has been working with the CSH model since 1990, and this new project underscores the essential role of school boards and administrators to lead effective CSH in schools by creating and implementing school health policies and practices.

Last month, NSBA completed a five-year project to help school leaders understand the link between student health and learning and the CSH models. In one instance, NSBA worked with the Kentucky School Boards Association and the Kentucky Department of Education on a project with school districts that integrated health and wellness objectives and aligned actions in their district improvement plans.  And NSBA developed and disseminated “What School Boards Can Do To Enhance Student Learning by Supporting a Coordinated Approach to Health,” which aligns with NSBA’s Key Work of School Boards framework, created by NSBA to support and guide school boards in their goal to raise student achievement.  The Key Work framework also includes eight key action areas that foster a systems-thinking approach and, like the CSH model, contains a community involvement piece through collaboration.

Through the cooperative agreement, NSBA will work with and through its state associations to share its expertise and experience with CSH and school health issues. NSBA plans to expand its continuum of school health information services, technical assistance, and collaborations among school board members, administrators, and others to: 1) Increase the engagement and effectiveness of education leaders to promote, develop and implement policies and practices that support CSH and improve education and health outcomes; and 2) broaden and strengthen support for CSH to foster sustainability of effective policies and practices.

NSBA will conduct strategic planning in the first six months of the project, which will be guided by a workgroup comprised of various stakeholders.  Following this process, which includes the input of NSBA’s state school boards associations and their members, NSBA will form a national cadre of school board members and administrators that will educate and mentor other state and district school leaders on policies and practices that support CSH.

For more information, please contact schoolhealth@nsba.org.

A recently proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that would eliminate white potatoes from federally subsidized school breakfasts and limit their serving at lunch has set off another round of protests about the federal government’s school nutrition regulations.

The USDA proposal would limit starchy vegetables, such as potatoes, corn, peas and lima beans, to a total of one cup per week for federally subsidized school lunches.

The potato industry is now promoting its product as a “true gateway vegetable” that could lead kids to broccoli, according to the Wall Street Journal.

I’m not convinced about that, but Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, which is one of the leading states producing potatoes, noted at a hearing that the spud contains more nutrients than iceberg lettuce, which hasn’t been banned.

As the potato industry mobilizes its lobbyists, some school nutritionists are also defending the spud. The Gooding school district in Idaho, which won a USDA award for schools that feed children healthier meals and promote physical activity, will lose its twice-a-week potato bar, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Nutrition director Anji Baumann told the newspaper that the popular bar includes locally grown spuds with themed toppings such as Mexican, with salsa and refried beans; and pizza, with low-fat mozzarella, low-sodium Canadian bacon and veggies.

NSBA has other issues with the Child Nutrition law, which was reauthorized last year and sets new standards for all foods sold at schools.

NSBA’s advocacy department reports that at a recent hearing of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education witnesses from school food authorities and other providers warned of plate waste and reduced participation in the school breakfast and lunch programs. The potato folks are also warning that this is what happens when you replace the spud.

In the meantime, a baked potato is sounding like an awfully good dinner…

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

In other news, studies show that early childhood education shows big rewards in boosting young children’s readiness for school, particularly those from disadvantaged populations, but states are cutting the programs’ funding in the wake of major budget shortfalls, CBS News reports…

A new study finds that students who work more than 15 hours a week in high school show lower rates of college completion, increased problem behaviors and decreased school engagement, according to USA Today… And the Beverly Hills Unified school district in California is setting perhaps the loftiest fundraising goal in K-12 history: $1 million in one week, the Los Angeles Times reports. Donations would help retain about two dozen teachers and staff members who would otherwise be laid off.

Attendees at the Saturday Annual Conference session on “Working Together to Protect Children with Vital Safety Information” learned about the National School Safety Coalition, which now has more than 40 participating national and state organizations and government agencies. Don Mays, Consumer Union senior director for technical policy and safety, said the organization aims to “empower consumers to protect themselves in four ways: through testing, informing, protecting and connecting. They are concerned that, although product recalls are frequent, not all are publicized and the information is not reaching consumers effectively.”

Explained Jamie Schaefer-Wilson, Consumers Union associate director for multimedia outreach programs, schools are seen as vehicles for reaching parents with news about product recalls. She urged school board members to sign up for text messages to receive product safety alerts and then share them with constituents, and to add a link to the safety alerts on products children use or that are used in children’s environments at school or at home at clickcheckandprotect.org. There is a link to this safety alert website on NSBA’s main Web page.

Children’s items represented 73 percent of all recalled products in 2010. Toys were the most often recalled products—13.6 million—but the most common hazard cited in recall announcements was strangulation, usually from window covering cords and children’s outerwear. Kids get caught by drawstrings on outerwear and are injured. One retailer had 11 recalls on such products last year, so parents need to know not to buy them. Consumers Union is working with manufacturers to eliminate this hazard.

Recent recalls have been for drop-side cribs, toys, infant slings, stadium lights, and a variety of foods and medicines. “Even with the most highly publicized children’s product recalls, there is generally only a 10-30 percent response rate by consumers,” said Mays. “Direct consumer contact enhances recall effectiveness.”

Speaking as a parent, Schaefer-Jones said, “We know when soccer practice is, but we don’t know about products that are recalled.” The School Safety Alert Program pushes the information out to parents through the venues where children spend time, which is why schools are integral to the alert system. “A child shouldn’t be put at risk because we couldn’t get the word out.”

Schaefer-Jones asked attendees to add the ClickCheckandProtect.org site out on all their school district websites and in newsletters. “We’re asking everyone to do more, help us get the information out,” she said.

Brenda Z. Greene

Developed under a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, the publication addresses the potentially life-threatening nature of asthma, a long-term disease that narrows the passageways to the lungs, constricting breathing.

The CDC reports that more than five million school-aged children suffer from asthma, and nearly 13 million school days are missed due to asthma. In addition, asthma accounts for about one-third of all pediatric emergency room visits and annual expenditures for health and lost productivity due to asthma are estimated at nearly $20 billion, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

While no one knows what causes asthma, health experts do know that certain environmental factors like second-hand smoke, vehicle exhaust, and pollen can induce symptoms like wheezing, coughing, and tightness in the chest.

In the Schoolyard and Beyond: Addressing Childhood Asthma in Your Community recommends schools, families and communities adopt a coordinated approach to keeping asthma-afflicted youth as safe and healthy as possible. Among the steps suggested stakeholders are advised to:

• Develop an asthma action plan for the individual child that includes information like medication, specific triggers, and symptoms;
• Reduce exposure to known triggers; manage medications and educate youth on the appropriate way to use them;
• Encourage opportunities for physical activity;
• Establish and maintain good communication;
• Provide and/or take advantage of asthma education offered by local asthma coalitions.

“This brief document underscores the importance of families, schools and youth-serving organizations partnering to make sure students with asthma have consistent supports wherever they are,” said Brenda Z. Greene, NSBA’s director of School Health Programs. “If everyone plays their part, the six action steps in this document can have a powerful impact on the success of students with asthma at school and in their other activities.”

The guide is available in English and Spanish from the NSBA website.

Approximately 150 students, parents, teachers, non-profit leaders, advocates, and policymakers attended the conference and discussed ways they can work together to make our schools and communities safe for all students.

“School board leaders and school officials are committed to safe educational environments for all students,” said Rickman. “With the right guidance and resources school leaders can meet the challenge of ensuring schools are a safe place for all students, free of bullying and harassment.”

Here’s the White House video from the conference:

As announced at yesterday’s conference, NSBA will launch a series of student conversations between school board members and students in middle and high school about the climate in their schools. The sessions will be guided by questions from the research-based school climate surveys developed by NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) and by the Pearson Foundation’s Million Voices project.

“As school boards across the country develop policies and initiatives to combat bullying, it is important they hear from students about the current realities they face in their schools,” said Rickman.

The event, produced in partnership with the National School Boards Association, National Middle School Association, and the American Association of School Administrators, calls for middle school students across the country to participate in a pre-choreographed “Let’s Move!” dance exercise routine at an identical time — Tuesday, May 3, at 1:42 p.m. Eastern Time.

Beyoncé will be the exclusive featured performer for the “Let’s Move! Flash Workout.” She has re-written and re-recorded one of her songs and is providing an instruction video demonstrating the dance/exercise routine. The Beyoncé video will then be distributed to participating schools.

BoardBuzz  commends the “Let’s Move” initiative and this workout event to combat widespread childhood obesity.

This annual campaign is designed to educate citizens about the importance of exercise and making healthy day-to-day food choices.

Changing habits as an adult is possible, but extremely difficult—especially if it means reinventing your entire lifestyle. That’s why it’s especially important to education children and teens about nutrition—helping them to understand that a healthy lifestyle should be a top priority.

Statistics about national childhood obesity are nothing short of disturbing. One third of America’s children are overweight or obese, according to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign.    

On average, children spend nearly half of their waking hours in school, so it is imperative the nutritional school lunches are provided. A recent study in Michigan found that children who ate the school lunch regularly were at a higher risk for obesity, The New York Times reports.  

In other words, the nutritional value of school meals across the country needs to improve, and improve quickly. Schools have a substantial influence upon the eating habits of children, as many eat school lunches every day, and others also eat school breakfasts.

In August, the ASBJ reported on other efforts against childhood obesity, such as schools planting vegetable gardens. Past ASBJ articles about school food and nutrition can be found here.

A great resource on the American Dietetic Association’s website is the “Rate your Plate” quiz, which asks questions about nutritional consistency in quiz-taker’s diets. At the end, a short blurb about dietary habits and a link to a U.S. Department of Agriculture resource to create a personalized diet are provided.       

The American Dietetic Association also highlights the quick-fix and often bizarre trendy diets throughout the ages in their Fad Diet Timeline.  These gems are sure to make you lose weight in the most temporary and unhealthy ways possible. 

The absurdities range from the 1925 “Cigarette Diet,” when Lucky Strikes encouraged smoking for thinness, to the 1976 “Sleeping Beauty Diet,” taking a little power nap for multiple days under heavy sedation, to my personal favorite, the “Caveman Diet,” a testament to our primal ancestors. The timeline missed the 2011 Typical College Student’s Diet. This consists of Ramen Noodles, pizza, macaroni and cheese, coffee and (hopefully for of-age students) cheap beer. Side effects may include inability to move and reach the remote control, a lack of motivation to finish that term paper, and falling asleep in class.   

Such diets seem ridiculously outlandish, but they also serve as a testament to the lack of education about healthy eating habits that has been spread throughout history in this country. How many college students are aware of the consequences of their eating habits? How many care?    

During my freshman year of college, I took a nutrition class in which we had to track our diets using computer software. After reviewing the results, I was surprised that my heart was still beating. My daily sodium intake was nearly triple the recommended value. 

I made necessary changes, bit by bit—but it certainly did not happen overnight, and my diet remains far from perfect. If we start educating children from a very young age about the importance of nutrition, it will be ingrained into their minds and make more of a lasting impact. As a result, hopefully fewer adults in the future find themselves in a predicament of having to change their life-long unhealthy eating.

Melissa Major, Spring Intern

Catherine Davis, a clinical health psychologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at Georgia Health Sciences University in Augusta, led a study in which researchers analyzed MRI brain scans of 7 to 11- year-old overweight participants after they were randomly assigned to complete 0, 20 or 40 minutes of non-competitive physical activity daily after school, HealthDay News reports.

Results of the study, which was published in the January edition of Health Psychology, showed that the amount of daily exercise positively correlated with increased activity in parts of the brain associated with executive functions, such as complex thinking and reasoning.

The results confirm what school officials should have already known and implemented – the need for a school-wide emphasis on exercise. Physical activity serves an important role “in helping kids stay physically well and mentally sharp,” Davis told e! Science News.

One high school near Chicago has used exercise outside gym class “jump start [students'] brains,” as one physical education teacher put it, for more than five years.

Naperville Central High School Students begin the day by attending gym class and continue to use yoga balls and treadmills throughout the day. As of last year, math scores had increased by 21 percent since the program was implemented and on average, students were reading more than one year beyond their grade level, ABC news reports.

According to the Nemours Foundation, 1 out of 3 American kids are now considered overweight or obese.  This statistic is unbelievable, and is can be greatly attributed greatly to what is known as the sedentary problem.

Children are now spending 5 and a half hours on average in front of screens, which include TVs, computers and video games, according to the Nemours Foundation.

Such behavior “is compromising children’s ability and achievement,” Davis told HealthDay News.

Another resource for parents and school officials is the American Psychology Association’s Tips for Acting Boldly to Change Diet and Exercise for Kids (ABCDE), 1,200 copies of which were distributed to 12 elementary schools in Tallahassee, Fl., in January.

The fight against childhood obesity requires the cooperation of parents and schools. Parents should set limitations on their children’s sedentary activities at home and schools should create comprehensive programs that promote active youth.

In other words, the children of American should be taught to live by the words of the ancient Roman poet Juvenal — Mens sana in corpore sano—In a sound body, a sound mind.

Melissa Major, Spring Intern

And yet, the study also reports that 30 to 50 percent of adolescents and young adults consume these potentially hazardous beverages, which often contain “high and unregulated amounts of caffeine,” according to the study.

Energy drinks such as Red Bull, Monster and Fuel, are readily available at several public schools, such as The University of Tennessee, which took heat for selling the drinks to young customers at sporting events.

According to United Marketing, a vending machine company, energy drinks are a product sure to produce “high-powered profits.” The company even names “sleep-deprived college students” as a target consumer group and “schools” as a “prime energy drink vending machine location.”

It’s well known that college students tend to thrive on caffeine, but I have to question the priorities of schools who jump on the energy drink bandwagon. Profits over student health perhaps? Not to mention that a jittering student with heart palpitations might not have the highest level of academic productivity.

But perhaps the most frightening of the energy drink family is 5-hour ENERGY shot, a 1.5 oz bottle which emphasizes its’ “zero sugar, four calories and as much caffeine as a cup of the leading premium coffee” as a selling points.

What 5-hour ENERGY fails to advertise is that like other energy drinks, it has “no therapeutic benefit,” and it is quite possible that “many ingredients are understudied and not regulated,” according to the study.

Dr. Maureen Storey, senior vice president of science policy for the American Beverage Association, issued a statement in which she said that the study “perpetuates misinformation about energy drinks.”

Citing a National Health and Nutrition Examination survey, she wrote that most of the caffeine consumed by people 18 and under is from sources other than energy drinks.

She conveniently did not touch upon a major consumer group of energy drink, college kids– most of whom are between 18 and 22.  

Walk into the library of a public university such as The University of Maryland past 12 a.m. and there’s a high probability you’ll see at least one student pinching their nose and throwing back this notoriously bad-tasting energy shot.

The New York Times reported that during finals week of the last school year, College Park’s 7-11—just several meters off-campus–sold a high of around 400 energy shots.  

Reported symptoms in connection with increased energy drink consumption in Germany were “liver damage, kidney failure, respiratory disorders, agitation, seizures, psychotic conditions, high blood pressure, heart failure, and disruptions of heart rhythms,” WebMD Health News reports. 

Sounds pretty harmless.

“Several countries and states have debated or restricted their sales and advertising,” according to the Pediatrics study.

What’s to debate? Energy drinks should certainly be banned from vending machines in middle and high schools, and public universities should consider finding other ways to make money that don’t directly impair the health and well-being of their students.

Or perhaps cigarettes and chewing tobacco should be made available in college convenience stores as well.

Of course limiting the sales of energy drinks on campuses will not eliminate students’ use, but public universities should not take part in perpetuating the craze.

Melissa Major, Spring Intern

But the new research shows this is not the case for many LGBT youth in the U.S. According to an online survey conducted in 2009, nearly one in three responding LGBT teens admitted skipping at least one school day in the previous month due to concerns for their safety.

The new CDC resources are a “nice tie between public health and education,” said Brenda Z. Greene, director of NSBA’s school health programs.

“When students are disengaged or bullied, they don’t feel safe and they’re not going to do as well in school—if they show up at all,” Greene said.

LGBT adolescents face tremendous stresses, which increase their risk for mental health problems and substance abuse. A national study of lesbian, gay, and bisexual 7^th through 12^th graders found that these youth were twice more likely than their straight classmates to have attempted suicide.

As a result, school board members and administrators are being called to take a stand against the bullying epidemic.

“This is a good time to be proactive,” said Roberta Stanley, NSBA’s director of federal affairs, at a Feb. 7 presentation on digital bullying at the Federal Relations Network conference. “You don’t want to be the one to be [negatively] highlighted.”

The CDC recommends enforcing “clear policies, procedures and activities designed to prevent bullying.” Additionally, an atmosphere with supportive staff,  psychological “safe spaces” and the development of student run organizations such as the Gay Straight Alliance can help LGBT youth flourish.

To improve sexual education, schools can use  “inclusive terminology” and cover issues relevant to LGBT youth. Information about community resources for HIV and other sexually transmitted disease testing should also be provided by schools.

“When people are talking about an important issue as if you’re not there, you’re not going to pay attention,” said Greene. Ignoring same-sex couple issues “disenfranchises” LGBT teens, who have a lower chance of engaging in “high risk” health behaviors if included in curricula.

NSBA’s 2011 annual conference, held April 9 to 11 in San Francisco, will include a presentation about “Welcoming Schools”, a Human Rights Campaign initiative to help public schools create a healthy and productive climate for all students.

These changes will help create “positive, supportive, and healthy environments,” which “promote acceptance and respect and help youth feel valued,” according to the CDC. But in order to succeed, Greene said, school employees must also have a “commitment to kids and a commitment to doing the right thing.”

-Melissa Major, publications intern