CATCH Health at Home Meets Urgent Need for Health Ed During COVID-19 School Closures

January 8, 2020  | By CATCH Global Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 8, 2020

Thousands of parents and educators have signed up to access free health ed lessons and resources from the evidence-based CATCH® Program, as an often-neglected subject finds new relevance amid coronavirus-related school closures.

AUSTIN, Texas – As parents and educators scramble to find ways to productively occupy their homebound kids, the non-profit CATCH Global Foundation (CGF) has approached the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity for families and schools to tackle a topic that normally struggles to find space in the standardized test-centric academic universe: Health Education.

On Wednesday, March 18th, not long after the federal government issued national social distancing guidelines, CGF launched CATCH Health at Home, a free resource for parents and educators chock full of content from their evidence-based health education programs, including the youth vaping prevention program CATCH My Breath.

More than 24,000 visitors rushed to the site in the ensuing days – the total number of sign-ups for CATCH Health at Home is nearing 3,000 – confirming that parents and schools see health education as more important than ever.

“Now is the perfect time for kids to learn and practice basic health promoting behaviors, like eating nutritious foods and engaging in regular physical activity,” says CGF founder and CEO Duncan Van Dusen. “Because in addition to being fundamental to overall wellbeing, these behaviors are known to support immune health and reduce stress.”

In fact, the CDC and WHO recently recommended well-balanced meals and exercising regularly among their strategies for managing stress – itself an influential factor of immune health – during these times of isolation.

The content in CATCH Health at Home includes physical education activities and games, nutrition & health resources that include a newly developed lesson on hand washing and a lesson on vaping and COVID-19, and activity breaks for those times when parents just need something to get their kids up and moving.

“Health education is one of the most powerful prevention tools we have at our disposal,” says Van Dusen. “Think of where we might be if basic health fundamentals like proper hand washing were instilled and reinforced from a young age, instead of taught in the midst of a pandemic.”

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Media Contact: Brooks Ballard, 512-294-8666, [email protected]