Public Policy- Educational Wellness Policy

Public Policy-Educational Wellness Policy

The model used in this Educational wellness policy is Institutional Model. Institutional model primarily concerns with government organizations and government policies for institutions. These institutions include local as well as national bodies (Dye, 2010). Traditionally, institutional policies are followed by government organizations such as congress, presidency, courts, and political parties as well as, other policies established by one of these organizations for local agencies including educational institutions.

The institutional model used by congress to develop such policy is recognized by the federal government. This has been a coordinated effort by the entire society and institutions including professionals of child nutrition, board members in schools, students themselves, parents, administrators of schools and teachers (Model of Wellness Policy, 2010). This coordinated effort requires a holistic approach of informing the community members about the policy and involving adults as being the role models for improving the long-term health and well-being of students.

The wellness policy described in this paper pertains to the new federal requirements. The policy is brought into view by considering existing exemplary practices from state and local schools, conducting research in weaker areas and based on science. The importance of this policy is to develop a program that results in the student's well-being. Development of this policy will enable schools to have all the components of school health. This policy addresses components which are not addressed in the previous policies, such as mental health services and school health policies. Certain other areas that are covered in this policy include counseling to prevent eating disorders, food safety policy and weight reducing policies.

Apart from the above discussed components and the uses of wellness policy, one of the major rationales of this wellness policy is to develop a framework for schools to have a healthy environment beyond the meals in the cafeteria. The need to have this arises because of an increasing trend in the youth of getting overweight and obesity. For students to perform well in education and to have a healthy life in the future requires healthy lifestyle.

At the same time, a healthy life style requires a combination of healthy choices of food, nutritional knowledge and a considerable amount of physical activity. Based on these considerations, this policy focuses on the availability of food with nutrition choices on the campuses. Along with the availability, schools should ensure the incorporation of nutrition education ...