An Exploration of Student - and School-level Predictors of the Relationship Between Student Health and Academic Performance

In the last two decades, educational policy in the United States has increasingly focused on academic performance outcomes (e.g., standardized test scores) sometimes at the expense of broader definitions of student wellbeing, such as opportunities for maintaining good health, e.g., physical activity. At the same time, adolescent health has become a leading public health priority due to the growing prevalence of obesity and increasing sedentary behaviors within this population. It is now well established though that health is an important factor contributing to student academic outcomes. An emerging body of research has identified physical fitness and weight status as significant predictors of academic performance. Additionally, research has identified school social composition, such as the proportion of low-income students within a school, as an important predictor of student health and academic performance. However, school social composition is increasingly recognized as a proxy for unmeasured features of the school environment, such as norms and expectations about health behaviors, that are important for student outcomes. More research is needed to understand how school social composition relates to other characteristics of the school environment, and how both may influence student health and academic outcomes above and beyond student-level factors. This dissertation addresses these research questions using data from the Cambridge Public School District (CPSD) to better understand the relationship between health and academic performance and examine the extent to which this relationship is explained by student-level characteristics versus characteristics of the school environment.