Health Education

Unit 1

• Health choices and long-term consequences of choices
• Benefits of, practices for, and personal responsibility for health (including healthy eating, personal hygiene, exercise, stress-management, adequate sleep, social and emotional health, disease prevention, and avoidance of accidents and dangers)
• Interrelationships of physical, mental, and social health
• Impacts of social pressures on physical, emotional, and social health
• Structure, functions, and interdependence of major body systems
• Causes and effects of poor body image
• Eating disorders and their prevention and treatment
• Changes in anatomy during puberty
• Role of hormones in growth, development, and personal health

Unit 2

• Possible physical, social, and emotional impacts of decisions regarding sexual behavior
• Strategies to resist pressures to become sexually active
• Characteristics of healthy relationships and dating behaviors
• Lifelong strategies for identifying and preventing depression and anxiety
• Importance of regular medical assessment
• Myths and facts related to disease transmission and prevention
• Ways the body defends itself against germs
• Communicable, noncommunicable, and hereditary diseases
• Evaluation of health products

Unit 3

• Basic safety rules for daily and recreational activities
• Understanding of first-aid procedures and emergency response
• Use, abuse, and effects of medications, tobacco, alcohol, and other substances
• Relationship between tobacco, alcohol, and drugs and unsafe situations
• Preventing the use of tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs
• Prevention of and response to deliberate and accidental injuries
• Reasons and ways to avoid violence, gangs, weapons, and illegal drugs
• Skills to identify, avoid, report, and cope with potentially dangerous situations
• Positive and negative characteristics of social groups, gangs, clubs, cliques

Unit 4

• Development of self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-control
• Understand appropriate ways to express emotions
• Positive social interactions with peers, in home, and in the community
• Bullying, alternative behaviors to bullying, and appropriate responses to bullying
• Strategies for resolving conflicts with peers and others
• Getting personal support from family
• How and where to get help in making health decisions
• Highway safety and traffic regulations
• Fire and arson prevention and safety