Mission: Providing health and safety education to children, teens, & adults.
Vision: Healthy, Safe, Strong children, teens, & adults.
Objectives:
♥To identify and meet the health education and safety needs of children, families, teachers, and schools.
♥To improve the quality of the MORE HEALTH lessons and programs.
♥To inspire, attract, and retain qualified administrators, staff, and teachers.
♥To initiate and integrate program expansion.
♥To increase the financial support for the growth of the organization.
Who is MORE HEALTH?
Healthy, safe, and strong children, teens, and adults is the vision that has guided MORE HEALTH and has allowed us to reach over 4.2 million school-aged children in the Tampa Bay area. MORE HEALTH, a 501(C) 3 nonprofit organization, creates effective health and safety lessons, trains high-quality instructors, and delivers those lessons to Pre-K through 12th grade students. In 1989, MORE HEALTH was originally started by Nancy Crane and the Junior League of Tampa as a 3-year project that ultimately became self-sufficient. Since 1992, MORE HEALTH has partnered with Tampa General Hospital and officially became a nonprofit organization in 1997. MORE HEALTH is committed to providing innovative lessons to empower students and their families with the knowledge to make healthy and safe decisions leading to a lifetime of overall well-being. We believe prevention begins with education.
What does MORE HEALTH teach?
MORE HEALTH offers 25 lessons addressing health topics such as brain, dental, firearm safety, heart, lung, nutrition, pedestrian and bike safety, personal hygiene, poison prevention, skin cancer prevention, and others. Lessons match the Florida State Standards and National Standards for health education and meet many standards in other subject areas, such as science, social studies, math, language arts, and physical education. Students engage in a kinesthetic style of learning with custom-made visuals, puppets, role-playing, songs, and dance movements. MORE HEALTH ensures students receive scientifically and medically accurate information by working closely with content experts and professionals in the community.
How is MORE HEALTH funded?
Establishing healthy behaviors during childhood is easier and more effective than trying to change unhealthy behaviors during adulthood. Research shows a positive link between the health outcomes of young people and their academic success. For this reason, Tampa General Hospital has served as MORE HEALTH’s major partner, investing more than 4 million to support the organization over the past 25 years. With funding from Tampa General, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, TECO Energy, Evara Health, The Spurlino Foundation, The Children’s Board of Hillsborough County, and others, MORE HEALTH instructors have taught students in Pre-K to 12th grades throughout the Tampa Bay area at NO COST to the schools.
Every year the demand from schools for MORE HEALTH lessons results in waiting lists for 1,000’s of students. MORE HEALTH continues to seek new community partners to meet the demand for health education in Tampa Bay area schools, and to expand the educational outreach to schools throughout Florida.
Where Does MORE HEALTH offer the lessons?
MORE HEALTH offers health and injury prevention lessons to Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco County public and private school students. During the 2023-2024 school year, MORE HEALTH instructors provided 6,964 health or safety presentations to 149,526 students in grades K-12 at no cost to the districts.
What are the Benefits of a MORE HEALTH lesson?
MORE HEALTH lessons include an interactive curriculum, using custom-made visuals to engage learners of all ages. All lessons are scientifically and medically accurate with a goal to improve knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward healthy lifestyles. The lessons average 40-60 minutes in length and are taught to one classroom at a time. The MORE HEALTH adult programs, such as the Healthy and Fit and Firearm Safety programs for families have been successful at engaging parents through hands-on activities and incentives designed to encourage participation.
MORE HEALTH Lessons:
♥Align with Common Core Competencies, Florida State Standards, and National Standards for health education. They also meet many standards in other subject areas, such as science, math, language arts, and physical education.
♥Engage students in a kinesthetic style of learning with custom-made visuals, puppets, role-playing, songs, and dance movements.
♥Ensure students receive scientifically and medically accurate information.
Students learn how to:
♥Analyze how family, peers, culture, media, and other factors influence them.
♥Access valid health information.
♥Use interpersonal communication.
♥Make positive decisions and healthy choices.
♥Set goals.
♥Self-manage and avoid health risks.
♥Advocate for individual, peer, school, family, and community health.
Components of a MORE HEALTH Lesson
♥Pre-visit materials delivered to classroom teachers prepare students for the lesson with vocabulary words, recommended reading, video links, pre-visit suggested activities, and pre-tests used for evaluation.
♥Lessons match state and national standards and include lesson goals and objectives.
♥MORE HEALTH instructors aim to teach the 40-60 minute lessons to one classroom at a time. The lesson presentation is fun and highly interactive, engaging students in the subject material as they learn life skills that help them lead healthy and safe lives.
♥Post-visit materials provide teachers with additional learning activities.
♥Educational materials brought home by students extend the lesson subject matter and recognize sponsors through communication with the parents/caregivers.
Lesson Effectiveness
♥Outside evaluators including USF’s College of Public Health, Hillsborough County School District, and New Directions/New Ideas, have studied and evaluated all Twenty-five MORE HEALTH lessons. Eight evaluative studies were published in health and nursing journals.
♥The lessons have been ascertained to be statically significant in increasing knowledge with the intent to change behavior.
♥Classroom teachers evaluate every MORE HEALTH classroom presentation for content, instructor presentation, and lesson effectiveness. During the 2023-2024 school year, classroom teacher evaluations averaged 98% satisfaction for the presentations.
