School Health Promoting Month- October 2023
Ministries of Health and Education together declared the Month of October as a School Health Promoting Month to strengthen the Health Promoting School (HPS) program in Sri Lanka. The World Health Organization (WHO) along with other partners including UNICEF, World Food Program and Save the Children joined the initiative, to scale up the efforts.
Inception and evolution
The concept of Health-Promoting School (HPS) was introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1995. Although countries aspire to initiate implementation of the HPS concept, still many countries find it is challenging to sustain the health promotional school environment and systems[1].
The concept of Health Promoting School emphasizes the importance of creating supportive school environments and involves collaboration with various stakeholders to promote the health and well-being of students and the entire school community.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant impact on education systems worldwide, including the implementation of Health Promoting School programmes. It disrupted school academics and other activities, necessitated the transition to remote or online learning, increased mental health concerns, and led to changes in dietary habits and increased sedentary behaviors.
Global experts are now highlighting the need to strengthen the Health Promoting School program in the post COVID-19 pandemic period, to sustain the achievements gained so far and to address the unique challenges posed by the pandemic while fostering a supportive and healthy learning environment.
In 2021, WHO released a series of guidance documents on HPS, including:
- Making Every School a Health-Promoting School – Global Standards and Indicators
- Making Every School a Health-Promoting School – Implementation Guidance
- Making Every School a Health-Promoting School – Country Case Studies
- WHO guidelines on School Health Services[2]
Figure1: WHO technical packages on Health promoting schools
Regional level initiatives
A series of high-level advocacy meetings were organized by the WHO South-East Asia Regional (SEAR) Office to push forward the global agenda on strengthening HPS programs. These efforts included,
- SEAR Resolution: RC76/9.6 on Revitalizing the school health program and health promoting schools in South-East Asia at the WHO SEA Regional Conference held in September 2021;
- Inter-ministerial meeting for high-level commitments in October 2021, which released a Call for Action titled ‘Making Every School a Health-Promoting School: Scaling Up Implementation of Comprehensive School Health Programs for Promoting the Health and Well-Being of Students and Staff,’ signed by Ministers of Health and Education in SEA region;
- Technical consultation to develop an implementation roadmap for Health-Promoting Schools in October 2021[3].
- Joint UN statement on strengthening education, school health, nutrition, and well-being by WHO-SEARO together with UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA, and the World Food Programme, [4].
Figure2: WHO technical packages on Health promoting schools & Ministerial call for action
Country level initiatives
WHO Sri Lanka has been a long-term partner with the Ministries of Health and Education since 2007 when the Health Promoting School program was introduced in Sri Lanka. The HPS program was implemented under a strong policy platform and a clear governance structure which facilitated joint responsibility of health and education sectors for implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The Health Promoting Schools initiative accreditation scheme was introduced to strengthen monitoring and evaluation, largely generating coverage data at school level.
With the introduction of global standards and indicators on HPS, WHO Sri Lanka, along with the health and education authorities, initiated an effort to adapt standards and indicators to the local context in the 2022-2023 period. A series of stakeholder discussions were held with an iterative process and consequently, the school HPS evaluation formats were revised to capture new standards.
Figure 3: Global standards on Health Promoting schools
Furthermore, a series of tools were developed with the technical and financial support of WHO to enhance the resilience of school children and school communities and to empower school communities. This included the development of:
- A package for teachers on psychosocial health promotion of students
- A dedicated website and learning management system on HPS
- Online learning modules on parenting for adolescents
- Online learning modules on Health-Promoting Schools
Figure 4: Healthy school life -web site and LMS (supported by WHO) – https://schoolhealthfhb.health.gov.lk/lms/
Declaring School Health Promoting Month- October 2023
Ministries of Health and Education together declared the Month of October as a School Health Promoting Month to strengthen the HPS program along with the support of all partners including WHO and UNICEF. The National Advocacy Program was held on 26 September 2023 in Colombo. The event was graced by Hon. Minister of Education, Dr Susil Premjayantha, and authorities from ministries of health and education at all levels, and representatives from WHO, UNICEF, WFP and Save the Children also joined. All the materials and tools and adapted HPS standards were disseminated among the health and education officers to start implementation.
Figure 5: School Health promoting month – October 2023
Figure 6: Hon. Minister of Education, Dr. Susil P Teenyantha, Secretary- MOE, Representatives from UN agencies at the launching of “School Health promoting month” -26.09.2023
Hon Minister of Education, Dr Susil P Teenyantha stated in his speech the importance of strengthening HPS to combat the emerging NCD epidemic, nutrition issues, substance use and violence. He further stated that the Ministry of Education is progressing with the revision of education policy to facilitate reforms including reforms targeting administrative structure, school curriculum, and integrating early childhood development into the country’s education system with the objective of transforming current education system towards an activity- based and child-centric education system on par with international standards.
Next steps: WHO with UNICEF and other UN agencies will continue to engage with health and education sectors to scale up the HPS implementation island-wide.
[1] Jones, J.T., Furner, M., WHO Global School Health Initiative, & World Health Organization. (1998). Health-Promoting Schools: A healthy setting for living, learning and working (No. WHO/HPR/HEP/98.4). World Health Organization.