Lessons Learned: Promoting Health through Schools

The link between health and learning is undeniable. Poor health affects a child’s cognitive and physical development, including their ability to concentrate. As a result, their academic performance suffers. This connection between learning and health has prompted many schools around the world to take inspiring and creative steps to foster the health and well-being of students and staff.

How to promote health through schools is examined in Health Promotion, Schools and Community: The Labyrinth of Implementation, a new HHD and Pan American Health Organization publication which is also available in Spanish. Focusing on the efforts in Latin American countries, key factors are identified for successfully implementing a “Health Promoting School”. The typical stages involved in transforming practices and policies are also outlined.

These examples from Latin America show what everyday people in schools and communities can do to improve the human condition. Their experience adds to the knowledge of what it takes to implement a new idea—weaving through the labyrinth of institutions and public policy. To do it successfully requires the inspiration of an exciting concept and vision, guidelines and polices that put that vision into place, cultivation of stakeholders to participate and gain ownership of planned changes, and lastly, training and ongoing coaching to learn the necessary skills to make change happen.

The publication highlights the ways in which schools are contributing to educational policy, to the fight against poverty, and to address the social determinants of health. It points out that schools and communities in Latin American countries have learned a great deal about how to work in complex situations such as crisis and emergencies, and often with limited resources and in uncertain politico-institutional contexts. The lessons learned from these experiences are a valuable asset to the people and the organizations in the region and beyond.