Comprehensive Health Education
Comprehensive Health Education
Health Education provides students with the knowledge and skills they need to be healthy throughout their lifetime. The intent of a comprehensive health education program is to motivate students to maintain and improve their health, prevent disease, and avoid or reduce health related risk behaviors.
Comprehensive health education addresses 14 component areas under Florida State Statute 1003.42 (2)(n) - Required Instruction
Grades K-12
- Community health
- Consumer health
- Environmental health
- Family life
- Injury prevention and safety
- Internet safety
- Nutrition
- Personal health
- Prevention and control of disease
- Substance use and abuse
- Prevention of child sexual abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking
- Life skills that build confidence, support mental and emotional health, and enable students to overcome challenges.
Grades 6-12
- Awareness of the benefits of sexual abstinence as the expected standard and the consequences of teenage pregnancy
Grades 7-12
- Teen dating violence
Health Education Related Rule Information
School districts are required to use the online Florida Required Instruction Reporting Portal available at https://flrequiredinstruction.org. By December 1 of each year, each school district must submit a district implementation plan for the three health topics of 1) Resiliency Education: Civic and Character Education and Life Skills Education, 2) Substance Use and Abuse Education and 3) Child Trafficking Prevention Education. Use of the portal does not affect the content districts are required to submit, only the method. Plans are still required to be posted on district webpages.
By July 1 of each year, each school district must submit a report that describes how instruction was provided for required instruction topics during the previous school year.
Florida Standards for Health Education
The Florida Standards for Health Education are based upon established health behavior theories, models, and evidence-based research, as well as best practices. Florida’s Health Education standards include the following:
- Core Concepts
- Internal and External Influence
- Accessing Information
- Interpersonal Communication
- Decision Making
- Goal Setting
- Self-Management
- Advocacy
- Character Education
- Substance Use and Abuse
The standards are structured by Standards and Benchmarks. The Standard is a general statement that identifies what the student is expected to achieve. The Benchmark identifies what the student will know and be able to do by the end of each of the grade.
Human Trafficking Awareness
Human trafficking is defined under Florida law as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjugation to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, slavery, or a commercial sex act. Human trafficking is modern slavery.
If you suspect a child is a victim, please call the Florida Abuse Hotline at 1-800-96-ABUSE or 911.
For more information and resources, please visit the FDOE Human Trafficking webpage: http://www.fldoe.org/schools/healthy-schools/human-trafficking.stml
Contact Information
Healthy Schools
Bureau of Standards and Instructional Support
325 W. Gaines Street, Suite 444
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0400
850-245-0423