Annual Report

CATCH’s virtual training courses – our second wave of COVID response resources – launched in July 2020 to serve educators as they prepared to re-enter schools in the 2020-2021 school year. This series of training courses, originally called “Restart Smart,” addresses Whole Child Leadership, P.E. During COVID-19 (In-School & Hybrid), and incorporating Meaningful Movement in the Classroom. To date, CATCH has served more than 1,300 educators through its virtual training courses, ensuring consistent delivery of whole child health education in the 2020-2021 school year.

CATCH My Breath, CATCH’s youth nicotine vaping prevention program, continued to expand rapidly in 2020, serving educators and youth confronted by the current vaping crisis. The program now reaches more than 1.4 million youth in more than 4,000 schools. Some highlights from CATCH My Breath in 2020 include:

• CATCH My Breath became the first and still only (as of April 2021) youth vaping prevention program in the world to publish evidence of effectiveness in reducing youth vaping. Our study in the peer-reviewed journal Public Health Reports found that CATCH My Breath reduces youth experimentation with vaping by up to 45 percent among students who complete the program.
• Released a curriculum addendum called “Vaping, Lung Health, and Infectious Disease,” detailing the links between vaping and COVID-19.
• Trained 500 educators to implement CATCH My Breath and/or train other educators on implementation.
• Worked with partners at University of Waterloo to adapt and refine the program for Canadian students. CATCH My Breath Canada officially launched February 2021.

In November, CATCH Global Foundation CEO Duncan Van Dusen published When Are We Going to Teach Health?, a “Big Idea” book advocating for prioritizing health in K-12 schools and synthesizing case studies of CATCH and other grassroots efforts in action. The book sold 1,000 copies in the first 6 weeks, vaulting it to Amazon’s #1 Hot New Release in Early Childhood Education and Nutrition, and #1 bestseller rank in Children’s Health, Education Policy & Reform, Parenting Nutrition for Kids, and several other categories.

The book has also attracted the attention of professors teaching undergraduate and graduate students of education, public health, PE & health education, and related disciplines. It has been put on the spring 2021 syllabus at top universities including The University of Texas at Austin, UTHealth School of Public Health, Wright State University, and Montclair State University, and is also being considered for use at the University of Michigan, U Mass – Boston, and Rice. Training the educators of the future in CATCH!

CATCH’s ongoing partnership with Action for Healthy Kids (AFHK) in 2020 and 2021 allows us to bring our Whole Child Guided Journey to 20 schools in Irving ISD, as well as CATCH health curriculum to an additional 20 schools in Irving, via support from the AFHK Game On Nutrition Education Grant program.

CATCH My Breath has been awarded a 2-year grant to support the Tobacco Use Prevention Education (TUPE) Capacity Building Project, a California state project led by the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE) in partnership with the California Department of Education (CDE). This work will include creating a course on best practices for developing and disseminating youth tobacco prevention programs, and leading train-the-trainer sessions for dozens of CATCH My Breath Community Trainers around the state.

CATCH Healthy Smiles brings oral health into the ever-expanding portfolio of CATCH’s Whole Child programming. The program’s core components consist of 5 classroom lessons per year and a weekly tooth brushing routine for students in K-2. The program mirrors other CATCH programs in that it is a truly coordinated approach to achieving its aims by including cafeteria labels for “tooth-friendly foods,” activities at family fun nights, PE supplements, posters, and more.

Dr. Shreela Sharma at UTHealth has received a grant from the NIDCR for a Clustered Randomized Control Trial that will begin implementation in the Fall of 2021. The program will also be available to schools to use starting in Fall 2021 outside of the research study.