The Urban health curriculum goes in-depth on topics like substance use and sexual wellness. However, it overlooks a necessary and practical component: How to build and maintain healthy habits in everyday life.
With Urban’s heavy workload, it’s easy for students to put their health on the back burner. Maintaining habits like sleep, nutrition and exercise can be difficult — but when these habits aren’t prioritized, academic performance, relationships and mental health often suffer.
Health classes should help students build routines that incorporate these habits and make them achievable. Students should leave health class with an understanding of how to build a consistent sleep schedule, maintain an exercise routine that fits their lifestyle, manage stress and eat in a way that fuels their bodies. Each of these habits reinforces the others, and developing them early on gives students tools they can rely on throughout high school and beyond.
While Urban does offer U periods that teach students mental and physical health strategies, they are short and only happen once a week. Furthermore, students have to opt in to these conversations, often requiring them to choose to spend 50 minutes talking about health over participating in other activities like chess, sports games or cooking with friends.
Health teacher Jennifer Epstein reflected on her experiences teaching health classes at other schools. “I used to teach at Washington High School, and health was a much longer class,” she said. “They covered nutrition and wellness in terms of physical health, spiritual health [and] mental health.”
However, because wellness differs from person to person, discussions are not always one-size-fits-all. “People have really different needs, … [and] people are coming from wildly different perspectives and experiences,” Epstein said. “Some topics, like body image and nutrition, for example, were really hard to talk about in a large open group.”
Despite these challenges, certain foundational habits should be incorporated into the health curriculum because they can benefit all students, no matter their individual needs.
Getting quality sleep, for example, can help improve a wide range of mental and physical health issues. According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, those who lack sufficient sleep may have trouble making decisions, solving problems, controlling their emotions and behavior and coping with change. Sleep deficiency has also been linked to depression, suicide and risk-taking behavior.
The health curriculum should teach students how to build routines that help them maintain consistent sleep schedules. The CDC recommends eight to 10 hours of sleep per night for teenagers ages 13 to 18. But according to the 2025 HIPE survey, an alarming 79% of 242 responders get fewer than eight hours of sleep each night. “I think sleep is the number one most important thing, period,” Carl Haidamus ’25 said. “I think that’d be a really important thing to add to the health curriculum.”
The health curriculum should also support students in building consistent exercise habits that remain sustainable after high school, when team sports no longer provide built-in accountability. In teens, regular exercise can decrease risks for depression and boost energy levels, according to Mayo Clinic.
“[In my] freshman year, when I was not healthy at all, I would just be lazy and not want to do anything,” Asher Ballon ’25 said. “I feel way better … when I’m exercising and eating healthy.”
Exercise can also increase productivity and support academic excellence. “Working out acts [as] a jump start … It gets rid of brain fog,” Haidamus said. “I definitely noticed that the days that I do work out, I get a lot more work done.”
These healthy habits work together to improve physical and mental well-being. Exercising makes it easier to fall asleep, and getting quality sleep makes maintaining other healthy habits easier.
But it is not easy to juggle all of these habits; it takes time and effort to make them sustainable. Urban students would benefit from professional advice on setting realistic goals. “I have a hard time balancing my different things in life. When I was really locked in on my health, I was not as locked in at school and vice versa,” Ballon said. “It could be helpful to talk about how to balance those things.”
The importance of learning these routines early will only increase as time goes on. Social media is posing a growing threat to the mental health of future generations, making it more necessary than ever to establish a healthy routine that students can fall back on. Students equipped with practical strategies to manage stress and anxiety are more likely to thrive in the face of constant digital pressure.
Given their limited time with students, the health department has to make difficult choices about what to include. However, developing healthy habits is crucial to what the current curriculum focuses on. When students cultivate a healthy relationship with their bodies and minds, they are more likely to make safe, informed decisions about serious issues like sex and drug use.
The health department is constantly reflecting on what they can improve. “On one hand, I think Urban offers a lot more health education than most schools, … but there’s always room for more,” Epstein said.