The Critical Connection Between Student Health and Academic Achievement: How Schools and Policymakers Can Achieve a Positive Impact is the first report produced from a multi-year project addressing the connection between student health and academic achievement.

The California Education Supports Project, an initiative funded jointly by The California Endowment, the James Irvine Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, will explore the complex connection between health and education with the goal of developing policy recommendations that foster healthy and supportive school and community environments. To achieve this goal, the consortium will work with administration officials, state legislators and key members of the education community to identify near- and long-term solutions to simultaneously promote student health and learning.

Over the next several months, the Educational Supports Project will commission a series of issue-specific papers to explore the impact of these various health factors on academic achievement. The aim of which is to develop a framework for injecting health—physical health, mental health and developmental health—into the state’s education reform dialogue.

Details on the project’s scope are outlined in The Critical Connection Between Health and Academic Achievement: How Schools and Policymakers Can Achieve a Positive Impact, a brief developed jointly by WestEd and the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at The University of California, San Francisco.

Click here to read the press release.