The impact of COVID-19 on student health behavior in k-12 public schools in Alabama

Abstract

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the health behavior of students all over the world. This study aims to explain the critical role of COVID-19 in changing students’ health behaviors and to provide suggestions for improving students’ health by preventing the usage of harmful substances. This study uses data from the Alabama Department of Education, focusing on subject and enrollment data. Excel and SPSS are used to analyze the trend of the total number of students in each state with time, and the mean values of school data before and during COVID-19 are compared. People may expect that the pressure from the lockdown and studying online causes severe abuse of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. However, this study finds an opposite conclusion that COVID-19 actually discouraged the use of those substances. The study shows that the total usage of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco illustrates a downward trend due to the blockade of COVID-19. However, after COVID-19 stabilized, the total amount of the three substances suddenly increased. In 2021-2022, there is a significant difference in the total amount used between k-6 and 7-9. These could be mainly explained by peer effect and parent controls which had less impact during covid-19 and became a dominant health effect factor after COVID-19. Finally, we give some suggestions for schools and parents to prevent the problem from worsening.