A 2018 study ranks Ohio sixth in the nation for having one of the highest rates of childhood obesity. That’s just one reason why a non-profit group hopes state lawmakers will finally pass a bill that provides standard teaching on nutrition. 

• Ohio is the only state without health education standards
• One-third of Ohio’s children are at risk of developing diabetes and heart disease
• Advocates hope Senate Bill 121 gets signed into law before the end of the year

Sarah Miller, with the non-profit Local Matters in Columbus, takes short breaks filling out thank you cards in between pushing legislators to create an avenue for health education standards.

She’s been working on it for the past year and a half. She says Ohio is the only state in the country that doesn’t have a K-12 standard curriculum, which covers nutrition. 

The Advocacy and Communications Manager says, “By instituting the education standards, we’re giving our teachers in our schools the resources they need to make sure they’re teaching the most up to date, robust possible.” Until something changes, teachers just teach what they know as best they can.

Miller says having the standards matter because statistics show that it already costs Ohio more than six billion dollars to treat high blood pressure and heart disease alone. More importantly, she says the impact on kids is even greater. “Right now, 33 percent of Ohio’s children have enough excess weight to put them at risk of developing early-onset diabetes and heart disease.”

Getting a bill passed has been a problem though, because health education is currently tied to sex education, something she says legislators aren’t willing to hand over to the Ohio Department of Education. So they’ve been trying to get a separate bill passed that would allow ODE to release a health education curriculum apart from sex education. Miller says, “By not having health education standards, we are sending a message to our students that we don’t really care about their health future.”

For now, she and others hope SB121 goes to the general assembly for a vote and gets signed into law before 2020 comes. If a bill is passed and signed into law, the Ohio Department of Education would then need to work on getting a curriculum in place and provide it to teachers to teach for all K-12 students. It’s not clear how long it could take, but representatives from Local Matters are keeping their fingers crossed, hoping it’ll be sooner than later.