Engage school staff in classroom physical activity through worksite wellness programs
A story from Vermont
“This was the first [worksite wellness option] that attempted to reach both the teachers and the [students].”
Jennifer Woolard
School Chronic Disease Prevention Specialist
Vermont Department of Health
Vermont’s statewide school employee worksite wellness program – Planned Action Toward Health (PATH) offered through Vermont Employee Health Insurance (VEHI) program – incentivizes staff to become Physical Activity Leaders (PALs) to lead and participate in classroom physical activity sessions. In order to be eligible for incentives through PATH, PALs must lead classroom physical activity sessions at least twice a week for a minimum of 15 minutes throughout the entire school year. By meeting this threshold, participants are eligible for incentives such as store gift cards, pedometers, or fitness trackers. We spoke with Ms. Woolard to learn more about the program and how it encourages classroom physical activity.
Key Takeaways
Engage health insurers to promote whole school health. Vermont schools are in a unique position to integrate physical activity into settings beyond traditional physical education classes as the updated educational quality standards (EQS) now encourage VT schools to offer at least 30 minutes of physical activity outside of PE time. In 2014, the VT Agency of Education (AOE) collaborated with the VEHI program to support PALs as a way to encourage the new EQS, while also providing health benefits to school staff. Through this partnership, AOE staff provided training to school district leads to become PALs in their local schools. School administrators can learn from Vermont’s program and work with health insurers to potentially incorporate a program like PATH into their own worksite wellness or employee health insurance program.
Leverage worksite wellness to promote whole school health. Health insurer-based worksite wellness often focuses on individual-level behavior change (e.g., tracking water intake, attending a tobacco cessation workshop, etc.). However, there is an opportunity for these initiatives to promote whole school buy-in where everyone – teachers and students alike – is engaged. When everyone is engaged through a shared program, teachers can learn from each other. As Ms. Woolard observed, “Sometimes it’s not easy [to incorporate new wellness practices], but watching other teachers [experience] successes and asking how they can adopt those activities allow success to carry over and trickle down.”
Track data simply. Whether data tracking is used to qualify for health insurance incentives, promote friendly competition between classrooms, or just document levels of physical activity in a school, data tracking can be simple. PATH used a “PAL Submission Form” where teachers were asked to write down the following for each physical activity session: session date, number of activity minutes, and age group of students. This type of form could also be translated into a GoogleForm or Survey Monkey to electronically capture data.