Health Promotion Activities
The health education departments supports and collaborates in initiatives to support the health of students in such areas as physical activity, healthy weight and dental health.

Safe School Activities
The department supports initiatives around bully prevention, peer mediation and violence prevention educational groups.

Policy and Procedure Development
The department has worked on developing policies related to sexual harassment, bullying, teen dating violence, healthy vending machines and others.

Collaborations
The Health Education works together with other School Departments and Community Agencies around health promotion and safe and drug free schools.

Community Agencies
We collaborate with many agencies and community groups including: Healthy Children's Taskforce, School Health Taskforce, Women's Commission, Peace Commission, Cambridge Prevention Coalition, Dating Violence Intervention Project, Title IX Advocacy Project, Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge Youth Guidance Center, The Family Center, Commission for People with Disabilities, Violence Prevention Taskforce and others.

Staff Development
Staff development workshops are offered to teachers and other staff members on teaching health education and school climate issues.  Topics include:  bullying and harassment, substance abuse and violence prevention, bully prevention, peer mediation, discipline, and class meetings and other health-related topics.  Teachers from many schools have attended introductory workshops and week long institutes on the Responsive Classroom, a program of classroom strategies for increasing social skills, academic success and decreasing problem behaviors. 

Family Involvement
The health education department strives to partner with parents in helping all students be healthy and succeed academically. Family members are notified of health education curriculum via letters in all languages. In grades K-6 the Great Body Shop magazines help keep parents informed of what's occurring in the classrooms. The curriculum also contains parent bulletins, which are sent home by some teachers.  The Health Education Department and the Parent Liaisons collaborate on a bulk purchase of bicycle helmets.  Parent workshops on bullying, personal body safety, healthy eating and other topics can be arranged through the health education office.

Peer Programs
Peer leaders are active at the high school and elementary working on bullying, sexual harassment and violence prevention.  The Students Advocating and Teaching Respect (STARS) organize a violence prevention week for all students at the high school each year.  Students teach about sexual harassment and teen dating violence in all 9th grade health classes.  In addition the STARS have worked with a theater troupe sponsored by Deana's Fund to create skits and lessons that they used in the elementary schools to teach bullying. A peer mediation program is being implemented at interested elementary schools.