About

  • Who We Are

    The Roadmap was developed by National Healthy Schools Collaborative a collective impact group of well-established, nationally recognized organizations working in health and education brought together by the Kaiser Permanente Thriving Schools.

  • Our Mission

    To identify bold, ambitious, action-oriented opportunities that have the potential to dramatically increase the number of healthy schools over the next decade.

  • Our Vision

    To coordinate and accelerate multi-sector collaboration needed to empower every school to succeed, every educator to excel, and every child to thrive.

The National Healthy Schools Collaborative collectively decided that the Ten-Year Roadmap for Healthy Schools must:

 1. Emphasize wellness, equity, access, and comprehensive support for all adults and students within schools.

2. Be informed by stakeholder voices including students, families, educators of all types, unions and their representatives, and members of the health ecosystem.

3. Be grounded in evidence.

4. Acknowledge that educators need the training, tools, resources, and support to prioritize their health and the health of all in the school community, especially students.

5. Encourage flexibility, adaptation, and innovation of health and wellness practices, programs, and policies.

6. Inform the way stakeholders think and speak about healthy schools. Developing the whole child is the best way to create strong academic outcomes.

A note from the National Healthy Schools Collaborative

Dear Education and Health Stakeholders, 

It is well established that health and learning are interconnected. Education is key to life-long success, but poor health leads to poor learning outcomes. On average, students with poor health miss school more often, may be less engaged, and face increased barriers to academic achievement. Conversely, on average, adults with more education tend to have better jobs, live in healthier neighborhoods, and have a longer life expectancy. Similarly, educators’ working conditions — including their health and safety conditions — also affect learning outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic further illuminated the interdependence of health and learning while also exacerbating deep inequities that exist across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The pandemic presents an urgent and historic opportunity to build a more equitable system that better serves children nationwide.

Members of the National Healthy Schools Collaborative (NHSC) are at the forefront of the movement to create healthy schools that strengthen the mental, physical, and social-emotional health of all employees and students. Successfully achieving this collective vision for healthy schools will require public-private partnerships and multi-sector collaborations — especially with the education and health sectors working together.  

We are calling on stakeholders from across the education and health sectors, as well as decision-makers at all levels of government, to dramatically increase alignment across systems over the next decade to ensure that every school in our nation is a healthy school. By collaboratively advancing bold, ambitious initiatives, we can create much-needed transformational change.

We know how difficult the past three years have been. Our deepest thanks for all you have done and all you will do to support the health and learning of students, families, educators, and communities. 


- The National Healthy Schools Collaborative