? ? The Centers for Disease Control has identified 6 priority areas that contribute to 70% or more illness, of the disability, and death of adolescents and young adults, and the development of chronic disease with advancing age. The priority areas are tobacco use, unhealthy dietary behaviors, inadequate physical activity, alcohol and other drug use, sexually transmitted diseases, and behaviors that may result in violence and unintended injury. Enhancing school-based health education programs to address those 6 priority areas is an objective outlined in Healthy People 2010, and the Institute of Medicine has recommended that more attention be given to assessment as a means to assure an effective health education curriculum. Yet standardized assessment of health knowledge regarding the 6 priority areas is not occurring in nearly all states due to a dominant focus on such subjects as math, reading, and science. Given this dilemma other mechanisms for standardized health knowledge assessment need to emerge. The overall objective of this project is to develop plans for a model health knowledge assessment and information management system at a community-based health education center that services 80,000 students yearly, and is one of 40 such centers nationally. Through a multidisciplinary team of educators, researchers, and public officials 3 Specific Aims will be accomplished: 1) plans will be developed for a model information management system that when fully implemented will provide classroom teachers with a composite of their students' knowledge on the 6 priority areas, track changes in student knowledge, and allow for the exporting of the assessment services to other health education centers nationally, 2) plans will be developed for the cross-linking of selected Indiana students' knowledge specific to the 6 priority areas with other data sources pertaining to students' demographics (e.g. socioeconomic indicators, race, gender) and performance on standardized academic tests, and 3) based upon the planning process a grant will be submitted to public and private agencies for implementation of the information management system.
The Specific Aims will be completed through a Steering Committee and 5 working groups (i.e. Health Education/Educational Psychology, Information Management and Technology, Geographic Mapping, Human Subjects Compliance, External Liaisons). Those working groups will collectively realize 9 predetermined Outcomes to complete the Specific Aims. ? ? ?
