EDC/HHD Re-designated as a WHO Collaborating Center

EDC/HHD has recently been re-designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as its Collaborating Center to Promote Health Through Schools through 2009. HHD has served in this capacity since 1998, building on our role as consultants, advisors, and authors on many reports and publications about global school health issues since 1991.

For WHO, a Collaborating Center is an organization that is part of an international network that carries out activities to support WHO’s international health work. These centers are responsible for functions such as collecting and disseminating information; standardizing terminology; developing, applying, and evaluating interventions; participating in collaborative research; strengthening the capacity of implementing agencies; providing professional development and training; and coordinating activities of different organizations. The goal of HHD’s center is to deliver services that strengthen schools and communities around the world to promote the healthy development of students, school personnel, families, and surrounding communities.

According to Jack Jones, School Health and Youth Health Promotion Group Leader at WHO, HHD has “played a substantial role in helping WHO provide leadership and direction for school health promotion, and in helping other international and national agencies do the same. With HHD’s continued collaboration and technical support, we will see effective school health programs not only recognized as viable public health interventions and essential for the achievement of Education of All, but actually implemented in schools throughout all nations.”

An example of HHD’s ongoing projects as a WHO Collaborating Center is a teacher training program to prevent HIV infection and related discrimination through schools in 17 African and Caribbean countries carried out in collaboration with WHO and the global teachers’ union Education International. Through this project, a training manual and an exercise book have been developed and 130,000 teachers have been trained about HIV prevention to protect themselves, their students, and their communities.

The Health-Promoting Schools Project in China mobilizes and strengthens health promotion and education activities at the local, regional, national, and global levels. It is expected to reach 90,000 students with comprehensive school health programs on psychosocial development, nutrition, tobacco use prevention, oral health, and injury prevention. HHD provides technical assistance, training, and evaluation.

In its role as a WHO Collaborating Center over the next four years, HHD envisions continuing its work on these and other ongoing projects as well as becoming involved in new projects to promote health through schools and communities at the local, regional, and national levels.

August 4, 2005