Helping students establish lifelong healthy behaviors through a collaborative approach!

SPARK researchers and educators have spent years developing and field-testing the best approaches and resources to help students establish lifelong healthy behaviors.

The CDC’s Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model expands on the eight elements of CDC’s coordinated school health approach and is combined with the whole child framework. CDC and ASCD developed this expanded model—in collaboration with key leaders from the fields of health, public health, education, and school health—to strengthen a unified and collaborative approach designed to improve learning and health in our nation’s schools. Click here to learn more.

The WSCC model consists of 10 interactive components. Schools by themselves cannot—and should not be expected to—solve the nation’s most serious health and social problems. However, schools can provide a perfect setting for this collaborative approach to health and education.

We are collecting free and paid resources that we have found to be effective and outstanding for the 10 components of the WSCC model. This intends to be a living-and-breathing site to help your school or community organization find relevant resources to support the health and wellbeing of the children you serve.


SPARK’s Recommended Resources

  • Social & Emotional Climate

  • Physical Environment

  • Employee Wellness

  • Family Engagement

  • Community Involvement


SPARK believes that two desirable outcomes
of effective WCSS programs are:

1. Environmental Change
How do we create environments that foster healthy eating, offer myriad physical activity opportunities, and facilitate consistent practice of wellness pursuits? What resources are there to help us?

2. Behavior Change
Within those environments, individuals are faced with choices every minute of the day. After basic knowledge is disseminated (i.e., eat less, move more, get inoculated, etc.) what efforts are made to teach people the skills they need to practice healthful behaviors on and off campus? What resources are there to help us?



To understand the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model, CDC created “Virtual Healthy School” an interactive tool that shows you how components of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model can be integrated into your school.

View Virtual Healthy School