SHE acknowledges WHO's definition of a health-promoting school.
The WHO definition describes a health-promoting school as ‘ one that constantly strengthens its capacity as a healthy setting for living, learning and working'.
A health-promoting school:
- Fosters health and learning with all the measures at its disposal.
- Engages health and education officials, teachers, teachers' unions, students, parents, health providers and community leaders in efforts to make the school a healthy place.
- Strives to provide a healthy environment, school health education, and school health services along with school/community projects and outreach, health promotion programmes for staff, nutrition and food safety programmes, opportunities for physical education and recreation, and programmes for counselling, social support and mental health promotion.
- Implements policies and practices that respect an individual's well being and dignity, provide multiple opportunities for success and acknowledge good efforts and intentions as well as personal achievements.
- Strives to improve the health of school personnel, families and community members as well as pupils; and works with community leaders to help them understand how the community contributes to or undermines, health and education.
Health-promoting schools focus on:
- Caring for oneself and others
- Making healthy decisions and taking control over life's circumstances
- Creating conditions that are conducive to health (through policies, services, physical/social conditions)
- Building capacities for peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, equity, social justice, sustainable development.
- Preventing leading causes of death, disease and disability: helminths, tobacco use, HIV/AIDS/STDs, sedentary lifestyle, drugs and alcohol, violence and injuries, unhealthy nutrition.
- Influencing health-related behaviours: knowledge, beliefs, skills, attitudes, values, support’.
Click here to see the WHO reference to a Health-promoting school
Click here to see the statement from the Moscow conference on Health-promoting schools
Click here to see how to see the manual of how to become a Health-promoting school