Alaska School Health and Wellness Institute

Welcome to the 12th annual Alaska School Health and Wellness Institute (SHWI), Monday-Wednesday, October 30–November 1, 2017, at the BP Energy Center in Anchorage, Alaska!

Schools play a critical role in helping Alaska youth learn the tools and receive the help they need to create healthy, happy, successful lives.  School health is a comprehensive multi-component approach for addressing the physical, emotional and mental health needs of students and staff - including nutrition, physical activity, school and student safety, staff wellness, healthy relationships, school climate and connectedness and many others.

The title “Healthy Students….Successful Students” highlights the most important reasons to focus on student and school health:

• Healthy students do better academically.
• Healthy students have lower absenteeism rates and higher graduation rates.
• Healthy students have fewer behavioral issues.  
• Healthy and successful students grow into healthy and successful adults.

The SHWI training was established in 2005 by the Department of Education & Early Development and the School Health program in the Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Public Health.  It initially focused on the development of school wellness teams and policies and has since grown much larger in scope and attendance, addressing many new emerging school health and safety topics while providing important professional development opportunities for school staff. To ensure equitableaccess to the Institute and representation from around the state the SHWI still offers a number of travel scholarships every year to those in need of financial assistance to attend.

We welcome teachers, school nurses, counselors, school administrators and staff, school board members, school nutrition staff, and others who work with schools interested in learning to cultivate healthier and more successful students.

The Institute is provided by the Division of Public Health in partnership with the Department of Education and Early Development with additional support from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, the Mat-Su Health Foundation and the American Diabetes Association Alaska.