EdNC. Essential education news. Important stories. Your voice.

Search ednc.org

MATCH continues to expand: Buncombe County Schools partners for student wellness

Share this story

Our republishing policy

EdNC is a nonprofit, online, daily, independent newspaper. All of EdNC’s content is open source and free to republish. Please use the following guidelines when republishing our content.
  • Our content must be republished in full. If your organization uses a paywall, the content must be provided in full for free.
  • Credit our team by including both the author name and EdNC.org in the byline. Example: Alex Granados, EdNC.org.
  • If republishing the story online, please provide a link to EdNC.org or a link to the original article in either the byline or credit line.
  • The original headline of the article must be used. Allowable edits to the content of the piece include changes to meet your publication’s style guide and references to dates (i.e. this week changed to last week). Other edits must be approved by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
  • Photos and other multimedia elements (audio, video, etc.) may not be republished without prior permission. Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you are interested in sharing a multimedia element.
  • If you republish a story, please let us know by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you have any questions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Canonical tag

Please include the following canonical tag in the <head> of the republished story.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.ednc.org/match-continues-to-expand-buncombe-county-schools-partners-for-student-wellness/">

HTML content

This includes the title, byline, content, and tracking pixel required for republishing this story.

Copy & paste HTML
This story is tagged:

Buncombe County Schools announced yesterday a partnership with MATCH Wellness, Inc., to bring to its schools an “interdisciplinary program” that “empowers adolescents to make healthy choices by focusing on nutrition education and increasing physical activity,” according to a press release.

Read more about the program here:

MATCH Wellness program teaches students to make healthy choices

According to the press release, the program uses “wellness themes” and incorporates them into school curriculum, such as science, math, language arts, and social studies. The program will begin in August and is available through “Healthy Blue, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina’s (Blue Cross NC) Medicaid managed care plan” funds.

“One of our main priorities as a school system is meeting students’ academic, emotional, and wellness needs,” said Buncombe County Schools Associate Superintendent Susanne Swanger. “This program is an outstanding addition to our curriculum. Thanks to the support from Healthy Blue, our students will be empowered to learn more about making healthy choices that will have a positive impact now and in their future.”

According to the press release, the MATCH program has served more than 50,000 seventh graders since it started in 2007. Right now, the program is in 17 counties, 69 middle schools, and reaches almost 11,000 students.

EdNC made this video back in 2015 about what MATCH looks like in a classroom: