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Promoting Global School Health with the World Health Organization
Since 1991, HHD has worked with the World Health Organization (WHO)
to advance health promotion through schools. As part of this initiative,
HHD Project Director Carmen Aldinger worked this past summer at WHO Headquarters
in Geneva, Switzerland. In her time at WHO, Aldinger played a leading
role in the development of a briefing paper and took an active part in
establishing the steering committee for a global Technical Meeting on
School Health.
The Technical Meeting, planned for June 2007 in Vancouver, will bring
together experts and practitioners from around the world to set direction
and provide leadership in promoting health through schools. In particular,
meeting participants will discuss:
- The current state-of-the-art of promoting health through schools
- Translating evidence into practice, particularly in low and middle
income countries
- How to reduce health and achievement gaps between "rich” and "poor" students
by tackling the social and economic causes of poor health
- Developing partnerships, particularly between the health and education
sectors
- How the media in a globalized world influence the health behaviors
of young people
“The work of Carmen and her colleagues at WHO and other peak organizations
contributed significantly to initiating this major, direction-setting
meeting for school health,” says Cheryl Vince Whitman, Director
of HHD.
Health-Promoting Schools
A health promoting school is one that constantly
strengthens its capacity as a healthy setting for living,
learning and working.
WHO calls upon governments, nongovernmental
organisations, and other public and private sector agencies
to help schools become Health-Promoting Schools. By doing
so, such agencies will help schools implement health promotion
and prevention strategies that are integrated and complementary.
They will help schools minimise competition for time and
attention between issues such as active living, life skills,
tobacco use prevention and HIV/AIDS/STD education. They will
help schools recognise and address the important relationships
between many such issues. They will also help schools design
and implement actions that are likely to achieve the most
significant long- and short-term health and education gains.
Source: The
World Health Organization |
This initiative is part of HHD’s role as the WHO Collaborating
Centre to Promote Health through Schools and Communities. The primary
goal of the Collaborating Centre is “to deliver services that strengthen
the capacity of schools and communities worldwide to promote the healthy
development of students, school personnel, families and surrounding communities.” Specifically,
HHD assists WHO by providing training and technical assistance to schools
and ministries of health and education to establish Health-Promoting
Schools (HPS), and synthesizing research for publications in WHO’s
Information Series on School Health.
During her time with WHO, Aldinger helped organize and convene
a Steering Committee with participants from around the globe. This Steering
Committee had its first meeting in late August 2006 and will assist WHO
in planning the Technical Meeting. Additionally, members of the
Steering Committee will write or commission background papers on the
topic. As members of the Steering Committee, Vince Whitman and Aldinger
are leading a track on implementing HPS globally, which will include
case studies from around the world.
"I value very much the contributions from Carmen, not only her
technical input to the meeting but also her persistent and earnest effort
to accomplish a task," said Dr K C Tang, Senior Professional Officer
of Health Promotion and the WHO officer who is overseeing the Technical
Meeting for School Health.
Aldinger also participated in HPS conferences in South Africa and Taiwan
in last fall, where she shared experiences with the HPS project and served
as a “bridge” among countries for knowledge transfer. Both
conferences provided opportunities to share HHD’s global expertise
on HPS, to learn more about the specifics of implementing HPS in resource-poor
areas, and to widen the network of HPS professionals.
Aldinger returned to WHO in January 2007 to assist in moving the planning
for the Technical Meeting forward. “The last major WHO event
that brought together international experts to look at the status of
school health was in 1995,” says Aldinger. “So much
has happened in the meantime. The Technical Meeting on School Health
will be an ideal venue for sharing strategies, creating connections and
setting directions to advance school health initiatives for the next
decade.”
For more information about the upcoming Technical Meeting on School
Health or about HHD’s work with WHO on Health Promoting Schools,
please contact Carmen Aldinger at caldinger@edc.org or
617-618-2362.
February 6, 2007
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