6th Grade Healthful Living

• Learn communication techniques and critical thinking for positive health decisions.
  
  

• Assess personal health and fitness status.
  
  

• Understand nutrition principles and develop healthy eating habits.
  
  

• Create sensible exercise practices and personal fitness goals.
  
  

• Explore stress management, teamwork, and character-building. Participate in physical activities such as dance and lead-up games.

• Sport strategies with an emphasis on rules and sportsmanship.

7th Grade Healthful Living

• Appraise personal health status and learn to manage stress.

• Practice communication and refusal skills to resist peer pressure.

• Apply injury prevention techniques 

• Understand dietary guidelines.

• Examine media messages and their influence on choices.

• Learn about abstinence and the risks of premarital sexual activity.

• Understand the dangers of alcohol and drug use, and practice encouraging peers to avoid risky behaviors.

• Participate in social dance, small-sided games, and advanced movement skills while valuing different ability levels.

8th Grade Healthful Living

• Recognize how media and peer pressure influence health behaviors.

• Identify healthy ways to manage stress.

• Learn safe weight management strategies (gain, reduce, or maintain).

• Demonstrate refusal and communication skills for abstinence and healthy relationships.

• Practice CPR (a graduation requirement in NC).

• Understand risks of alcohol and drug use, and learn to help others seek support.

• Develop a personal fitness program and monitor progress.

• Participate in individual, team, and lifetime sports with emphasis on fair play, safety, and cooperation.

• components of the program (nutrition education, structured PE, CPR training, etc.) are supported by research as effective at improving knowledge and modestly improving behavior/weight outcomes when implemented as multi-component, high-fidelity interventions. But there’s limited big-picture, long-term evidence that a single NC Healthful Living program (across all districts) produces consistent long-term health impacts — most evidence is local, component-based, or from smaller trials.

• The evidence that does exist tends to focus on knowledge, attitudes, self-reported behaviors (diet, some physical activity), not always objective measures (e.g., long-term weight status, fitness tests, sustained behavior change).

• Some studies lack control groups or have short follow-up periods, so it's hard to say how lasting the effects are. Also, because “Healthful Living” covers a broad set of skills (nutrition, fitness, mental health, relationships, etc.), it’s possible some aspects are working better than others, but studies may not disaggregate which component caused what effect.

Current Research On Healthy Living

NC Department of Public Instruction — Healthful Living standards & resources.
The official hub for NC’s Healthful Living Standard Course of Study and supporting resources; useful for curriculum guidance, PD materials, and links to any DPI research or pilot reports. (DPI maintains “research & reports” pages and resource hubs.) NC DPI+1

The Science of Healthful Living (NIH SEPA grant/curriculum development & evaluation).
An NIH-funded SEPA project based in NC that designed and field-tested a fitness/healthful living curriculum for grades 3–8 across several LEAs in central NC. Project documentation and conference reports show it was explicitly designed to be evaluated (including trials and teacher fidelity studies), though full long-term outcome papers are limited in the public literature. This is the closest thing to a formal NC-based curriculum evaluation effort. Grantome+1

Hodges et al., “Middle school nutrition knowledge tool development” (2017, PMC).
A peer-reviewed study that developed and validated a nutrition knowledge instrument aligned to NC Healthful Living standards. It demonstrates valid measurement tools tied to the standards (helpful when evaluating knowledge outcomes). PMC

Systematic reviews/meta-analyses of school-based interventions (examples).
Multiple reviews and meta-analyses (e.g., Jacob et al. 2021 and other recent syntheses) show that multi-component school interventions (health education + physical activity + family/staff involvement) can improve nutrition knowledge, health behaviors, and produce small but statistically significant reductions in BMI or z-BMI in school-age youth. These reviews support the plausibility that a properly implemented Healthful Living program can work, even if direct, long-term NC-wide evaluations are limited. BioMed Central+1

Local/LEA reports and Wake County documents (SHAC, program reports).
Wake County and other NC districts publish School Health Advisory Committee (SHAC) reports, program evaluations, and year-end performance documents that include implementation notes, small pilot outcomes, and recommendations. These are valuable gray sources for district-level evidence and implementation fidelity. WCPSS Web Archive+1

Teacher-fidelity and program-implementation papers linked to the Science of Healthful Living.
Conference papers and practical evaluations (e.g., discussions of teacher fidelity and physical-education outcomes) exist that evaluate how faithful implementation affects student fitness/knowledge. These are often in conference proceedings or discipline journals rather than large RCT outcome papers. Sagamore-Venture Journals+1

Pillar 1: Emotional & Communication Learning

Emotions are the gateway to self-discovery.

• Children learn to recognize and express feelings instead of silencing them.
  
  

• Develop healthy communication as the foundation for boundaries and connections.
  
  

• Gain tools to nurture positive relationships—the source of both joy and challenge.
  
  

Pillar 2: Social Interconnectedness

We are part of something greater.

• Explore what it means to belong, contribute, and share responsibility within humanity.
  
  

• Examine the balance between individual pursuits and collective good.
  
  

• Learn how families, communities, first responders, and legal systems provide support and safety.
  
  

Pillar 3: Planetary & Environmental Learning

We have only one Earth.

• Understand the responsibility of caring for animals, ecosystems, and resources.
  
  

• Recognize animals as social beings with independence, survival instincts, and communication.
  
  

• Develop empathy, respect, and stewardship for the natural world.
  
  

Pillar 4: Local Land & Resource Management

Stewardship starts close to home.

• Learn how land is managed and why waterways must be protected.
  
  

• Explore how construction and development impact biodiversity.
  
  

• Follow the journey of waste after it leaves our homes, and understand biodegradation.
  
  

• Gain skills to make responsible choices that protect local environments.