A pilot study assessing parent satisfaction with mental health services for children was a disappointment in its low response rate (28%, 15 of 53 questionnaires). However, the questionnaire, the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire, was an easy to use and effective tool that identified some sources of dissatisfaction. (SLD)

Public education systems are mandated to give students the opportunity for intellectual development and to teach positive human relationships. Health clinic staffs and programs associated with the schools are the most effective way to come to grips with the dimensions that sex gives to the adolescent life. (SLD)

Found that Mexican-American mothers with beliefs that involved an external locus of control in health matters were less likely than mothers with beliefs that involved an internal locus of control to use parenting strategies that promoted the internalization of healthy eating habits in their children. (MM)

Reports the positive effects of a school-based program including classroom health education, vigorous physical education, and lower fat and sodium school lunches on improving students' diet and physical activity. However, staff development and policy changes would have to accompany any widespread implementation. (CJS)

Reviews the experimental literature concerning the effectiveness of prenatal and newborn home visiting programs in improving the lives of children and families, focusing on studies employing randomized trials. Results suggest that home visiting programs have had mixed success, improving some outcomes but not others. (MDM)

Strategies for the adaptation of Head Start for the economic and social conditions of the future involve the linkage of early childhood and family support approaches with community economic development. Such strategies must include a reappraisal of mental health models to ensure the health of children and their families. (SLD)

Answers teachers' questions about physical fitness, emphasizing children's physical fitness, why people believe children are unfit, children's activity levels, heredity and maturation in fitness testing, test results, adequate fitness, activity, and participation, how long it takes children to get fit, reward systems, current fitness testing, and…

Physical fitness of children with learning disabilities may be comparatively low. In a school-university cooperative program, four rural children with learning disabilities and their families participated in a 10-week fitness program that included nutrition education and family exercise activities. Results were positive and showed the need for…

Reviews literature on prevention of child abduction and states shortcomings of traditional versus behavioral approaches to prevention of child abduction. Reveals that behavioral-skills training appears to be a necessary component in effective prevention programs and suggests children undergo such training, with the focus being on self-protective…

Summarizes 10 documents and 9 journal articles recently added to the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database. Among topics covered are relationship of health to school performance, community-based child development in Nepal, whole-language approach workshops, conference proceedings, science instruction, job satisfaction, day care…

Describes the evolution, implementation, maintenance, and evaluation of comprehensive school-based mental health services in the Dallas, Texas public schools. A collaboration between mental health services, other health services, and the schools established 10 Youth and Family Centers to serve local schools. Benefits and challenges to coordinated…

Presents information from a 1996 meeting by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Adolescent and School Health and the American Nurses Association's National Center for School Health Nursing. Participants reviewed progress since 1994 on seven critical needs, updated priority actions, determined strategies for achieving…

Identified barriers that delay seeking professional care following school vision screening. Focus groups of parents, students, teachers, school and community health professionals, and community leaders highlighted several barriers, including lack of community awareness about certain visual problems, high costs of glasses, inconvenient appointment…

Proposes a one-stop model of services to be delivered from pediatric outpatient clinics to improve the delivery of services to low-income preschool children and their families. The needs of low-income preschoolers and their mothers, and how these needs are met by this model, are described. (Author/CR)

Identifies how the legal regulation of sex education in Great Britain incorporates conflicting problematizations of HIV/AIDS and childhood sexuality through constructing distinct categories within the curriculum and legitimizing distinct roles for teachers, parents, and health professionals. Explains why school-based sex education fails to be a…