Evolution of the national disease prevention and health promotion strategy: establishing a role for the schools.

The history and evolution, during the past decade, of the national disease prevention and health promotion strategy is recounted, culminating with a description of the national prevention objectives. Objectives that directly could be attained by: (1) school health education; (2) school health services; (3) efforts to ensure healthy school environments; and (4) school physical education programs are delineated, as are objectives that could be influenced in important ways by school health programs. The nation's schools could contribute significantly and measurably toward improving the health of all Americans, if school health professionals, individually as well as within their various organizations, could seize and create opportunities to work with other health and educational professionals, and the public, to impel and enable schools to attain relevant national prevention objectives.