History

The Robert Crown Center for Health Education (RCC) has been the largest provider of health education for school-aged youth in the Chicago metropolitan area for the past 50 years. We offer age-appropriate programs on subjects covering General Health and Nutrition, Human Growth and Development, Mental Health, and the Science Behind Drugs and Prevention.  Classes from preschool through high school can visit one of the three Robert Crown campuses in Hinsdale, Chicago, and Aurora, or a Robert Crown educator can visit the schools. Annually, the RCC educates more than 100,000 children working with more than 600 schools from an eight-county region . 

The RCC opened as the Hinsdale Health Museum in 1958, and with support from the Crown family, we opened the Hinsdale Campus in 1974. The new facility was the world's first fully-instructional health education center for students and teachers alike. Schools throughout the region depend on our programs as an integral part of their own curriculum. In 1987 the Center began outreach programs for students in Chicago, expanding our outreach in 1996 to suburban schools and in 1997 to pre-school/daycare facilities. In 2002, we opened our Chicago Homan Square Campus on the West Side of Chicago in the North Lawndale neighborhood. The Museum of Science and Industry and RCC began a partnership to reach more youth with its family life program in 2005. Our Aurora Campus opened in October 2008, as we recognized the need to expand outward to access the growing population in the far west suburbs.

Over the past 50 years, more than 5 million students have attended Robert Crown programs on human growth and development, puberty, drugs, violence, relationship issues, healthy bodies and safety. Many parents who attended Robert Crown Center programs as students are now sending their kids for the same high-quality programming. After five decades, the Center is still just as responsive to what’s happening with kids as ever.