Grade 9-12 Chapters

How to Use This Textbook

This band contains 15 chapters that build on each other in order — each chapter assumes the concepts introduced in earlier chapters, so it works best read start to finish on a first pass. Every chapter opens with a short summary and a numbered list of the concepts it covers, drawn directly from the Grade 9-12 learning graph, so you can see exactly what you are expected to know before and after reading it. Students entering this band without an earlier one should first review the bridging concepts in the course description. Teachers can use the concept lists and prerequisite links to plan units, identify review points, or jump directly to the material a lesson needs.

Chapters

1. Food and Nutrition — Students design a personal nutrition plan and evaluate food labels, beverages, meals, and snacks, then examine how culture, community initiatives, and food systems shape chronic-disease risk.
2. Relationships and Respect — Students examine how relationship structures form and vary, what makes a relationship healthy, how to handle conflict and pressure, and how empathy and cultural context shape relationships.
3. Consent and Boundaries — Students build a working model of consent and personal boundaries, including how to communicate, interpret, and withdraw consent, and how power and law affect it.
4. Healthcare Access and Sexual Health — Students learn to access culturally safe, youth-friendly healthcare, understand STI prevention and treatment, and evaluate community sexual-health programs and boundary-based prevention.
5. Mental Health and Crisis Support — Students learn when and how to seek help for depression, anxiety, or suicide/self-harm risk, how to support a peer in crisis while maintaining boundaries, and how to reduce mental health stigma.
6. Conflict Resolution and Inclusion — Students develop nonviolent conflict-resolution and emotion-management skills, drawing on cultural teachings and restorative-justice approaches, and design strategies for inclusive, bullying-free environments.
7. Brain Health, Sleep, and Emergency Care — Students learn habits that protect brain health across the lifespan, including support for elders with dementia, the role of sleep in wellbeing, and how to perform CPR and use an AED.
8. Health Equity and Disease Prevention — Students analyze how social conditions create health disparities and inequitable access to physical activity, then evaluate strategies to prevent chronic and infectious disease.
9. Digital and School Safety — Students evaluate how digital content and social media affect relationships and boundaries, how to respond to online threats, and how to assess school safety practices and emergency preparedness.
10. Substances: Effects and Safer Choices — Students analyze how substance use affects the brain, body, decision-making, and relationships, compare commercial and traditional tobacco use, and learn safe medication practices and coping strategies.
11. Substance Recovery and Resilience — Students examine the short- and long-term effects of specific substances, learn to recognize and respond to overdose, and explore culturally grounded paths to treatment, recovery, and resilience.
12. Substance Policy and Law — Students evaluate community laws, financial and social costs, tribal sovereignty, and marketing policy related to substance use and the disparities these policies create.
13. Influences on Health Behavior — Students analyze how policy, culture, peers, norms, and community conditions shape health practices, and evaluate the reliability of health information, communication, and refusal skills.
14. Health Decision-Making and Goal-Setting — Students apply a structured process to weigh options and consequences, choose and justify the healthiest choice, and set and pursue personal health goals individually or collaboratively.
15. Health Promotion and Behavior Change — Students evaluate supports and barriers to healthy behavior, adapt their own practices, and design and refine fact-based health messages for different audiences.