School health education research: future issues and challenges.

This paper presents the view that the dissemination of effective school health education constitutes a significant problem that deserves high priority on a national research agenda for school health education. Justification of dissemination is grounded in two presuppositions: (1) that there is a positive correlation between health education and the practice of health-enhancing behaviors and (2) that health education is an appropriate and fundamental task for schools. Two complex sub-problems are discussed. The first is related to the fact that there are no data to help us determine how many children in this country actually receive health information in schools. In addition, there is insufficient evidence to ascertain either the quality or quantity of health information children receive or where in the curriculum the presentation of that information occurs. The second problem pertains to the myriad of complex factors that impede the implementation of health education in schools. These two problems are re-cast into a series of researchable questions.