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Scott McQuigg

ConnectivHealth's HealthTeacher Arms Instructors with Relevant Health Curriculum

A walk down the hallways of most American schools these days is a stark reminder that childhood obesity in this country is on the rise.

Scott McQuigg, CEO of Brentwood-based ConnectivHealth, believes a product the company acquired last summer will help tackle that problem and other health concerns plaguing U.S. youngsters and teens. That product, founded eight years ago, is called HealthTeacher, a curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade students.

"What we do at HealthTeacher is provide the tools and resources for teachers to help fuse together knowledge and skills for students, so that they have the knowledge and skills to make healthy lifestyle decisions. That includes not only things related to nutrition and physical activity, which are major components of addressing obesity, but it's also learning about community health and social and emotional issues," McQuigg explained.

Regardless of whether a teacher is a trained health instructor, HealthTeacher lesson plans are designed to facilitate introduction of health-related concepts. For example, a middle school lesson plan on resolving conflicts includes a role-playing exercise for students called "Red Riding Hood Revisited." In a nutrition lesson plan for fourth and fifth graders, students write and act out a commercial to examine how advertising affects food choices. To learn that no form of tobacco is safe, high schoolers write and perform a music video targeting middle schoolers. In addition to activities, lesson plans include teaching tips, background material so teachers are comfortable with the subject matter and an assessment.

"The way we've designed HealthTeacher is that if you're a dedicated health educator, this is a resource and tool that is as comprehensive as you would need it to be," McQuigg explained. "If you're an elementary school teacher who's trying to find a way to bring some health education curriculum into the classroom, it's also simple to modularly select which lesson plans you want to teach."

HealthTeacher is divided into 10 topic areas and includes lessons on the six health-risk areas identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

1. Alcohol and other drug use,


2. Tobacco use,


3. Physical inactivity,


4. Inadequate nutrition,


5. Actions that result in intentional or unintentional injury and


6. Sexual activity that can result in unwanted pregnancy or disease.

Written by professional health educators and reviewed by physicians, including pediatricians, the curriculum is aligned with the National Health Education Standards.

"We're first and foremost focused on whether a lesson plan achieves or exceeds one of the National Health Education Standards, or in many states, whether we are achieving or exceeding the state's health education standards," McQuigg said. Teachers may click on a lesson plan to determine what standard they're teaching to or search for plans that meet a certain standard.

While there are certainly other health curricula, HealthTeacher is different – it's an online resource. "There's a big movement in schools to provide more resources to educators that are online. We're at the front of that, if you will, on the health education side," McQuigg notes. That feature also allows health education experts on staff with HealthTeacher and contract consultants to continually update the curriculum.

"Unlike other subject matter that's taught in schools, health is a constantly evolving topic. We really pride ourselves on providing teachers resources that are current and topical and then connecting what's in the news back to lesson plans inside of HealthTeacher," McQuigg said.

School districts, schools and individual teachers may purchase access to HealthTeacher. In fact, one school's cost could be a little as $600. "While one can argue for and against the merits of No Child Left Behind, it has put a constraint on what school systems and districts have to spend on other curriculum," McQuigg said. "We want HealthTeacher to be economical for schools, knowing a vast majority of their resources are focused on other education issues."

HealthTeacher has discovered a winning funding formula in public-private partnerships that allow a leading healthcare provider in a community or a community foundation to purchase HealthTeacher for a school district. In fact, that has happened in Nashville. Late last year, Alignment Nashville, an initiative to support the city's youth, put HealthTeacher before 75,000 students in Metro Nashville Public Schools, thanks to a grant from the Healthways Foundation.

In October, HealthTeacher announced a partnership with Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and six Central Florida school districts. The online health-education curriculum will soon be available to more than 670 schools there. HealthTeacher is the approved health curriculum for the Chicago Public School District and for grades K-5 in New York City. In fact, HealthTeacher is in nearly 8,000 schools and used by about 20,000 teachers nationwide, as well as by individual teachers in several other countries.

To recognize the good health education work that schools are doing, HealthTeacher announced in August its collaboration with the American Association for Health Education to create, promote and bestow the annual Blue Apple Health Education Awards. Up to 12 schools will be recognized during the inaugural awards ceremony at the AAHE's national convention in Tampa, Fla., in April 2009.

HealthTeacher isn't the only ConnectivHealth product. VerusMed is a clinical briefing service for physicians, providing timely, unbiased, evidence-based medical news. PeerClip is an online bookshelf that allows physicians to organize relevant medical information they find on the Web such as articles, videos podcasts and continuing medical education activities. Finally, Discovery Hospital sells content for hospital Web sites. "We're helping the hospital's Web site become a local destination for health information in contrast to patients going to a national resource," McQuigg explained.

For more information, visit www.connectivhealth.com.

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