Promoting School Health

Health affects a child’s ability to learn and is a determinant of academic success. HHD has been at the forefront of promoting school health by facilitating trainings on creating comprehensive school health programs for policymakers and practitioners from the world’s largest countries and producing publications with the World Health Organization on the interdependence of health and education.

Some examples include Local Action: Creating Health-Promoting Schools, a step-by-step tool to help schools become healthier learning and working environments; and Skills for Health, which has been used worldwide to establish life skills-based health education. We have also conducted a qualitative evaluation of a Health-Promoting Schools effort in China, which is currently being scaled up province-wide.

As part of our global school health work, we have collected case studies from countries around the world about their experiences implementing comprehensive school health programs. We analyzed these studies according to factors that research has shown are necessary for producing change, such as the importance of vision and concept, the role of data for planning and decision-making, adapting to local concerns, participation and ownership by stakeholders, cross-sector collaboration, and tools for implementation. Case Studies in Global School Health Promotion: From Research to Practice, published by Springer Publishing Company in 2009, highlights 26 examples from different regions such as the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia. We have also produced a special publication in Spanish with 12 case studies of school health projects in Latin American countries.