Promoting Global School Health with the World Health Organization

Since 1991, HHD has worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) to advance health promotion through schools. As part of this initiative, HHD Project Director Carmen Aldinger worked this past summer at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. In her time at WHO, Aldinger played a leading role in the development of a briefing paper and took an active part in establishing the steering committee for a global Technical Meeting on School Health.

The Technical Meeting, planned for June 2007 in Vancouver, will bring together experts and practitioners from around the world to set direction and provide leadership in promoting health through schools. In particular, meeting participants will discuss:

• The current state-of-the-art of promoting health through schools
• Translating evidence into practice, particularly in low and middle income countries
• How to reduce health and achievement gaps between "rich” and "poor" students by tackling the social and economic causes of poor health
• Developing partnerships, particularly between the health and education sectors
• How the media in a globalized world influence the health behaviors of young people

“The work of Carmen and her colleagues at WHO and other peak organizations contributed significantly to initiating this major, direction-setting meeting for school health,” says Cheryl Vince Whitman, Director of HHD.

This initiative is part of HHD’s role as the WHO Collaborating Centre to Promote Health through Schools and Communities. The primary goal of the Collaborating Centre is “to deliver services that strengthen the capacity of schools and communities worldwide to promote the healthy development of students, school personnel, families and surrounding communities.” Specifically, HHD assists WHO by providing training and technical assistance to schools and ministries of health and education to establish Health-Promoting Schools (HPS), and synthesizing research for publications in WHO’s Information Series on School Health.

During her time with WHO, Aldinger helped organize and convene a Steering Committee with participants from around the globe. This Steering Committee had its first meeting in late August 2006 and will assist WHO in planning the Technical Meeting. Additionally, members of the Steering Committee will write or commission background papers on the topic. As members of the Steering Committee, Vince Whitman and Aldinger are leading a track on implementing HPS globally, which will include case studies from around the world.

"I value very much the contributions from Carmen, not only her technical input to the meeting but also her persistent and earnest effort to accomplish a task," said Dr K C Tang, Senior Professional Officer of Health Promotion and the WHO officer who is overseeing the Technical Meeting for School Health.

Aldinger also participated in HPS conferences in South Africa and Taiwan in last fall, where she shared experiences with the HPS project and served as a “bridge” among countries for knowledge transfer. Both conferences provided opportunities to share HHD’s global expertise on HPS, to learn more about the specifics of implementing HPS in resource-poor areas, and to widen the network of HPS professionals.

Aldinger returned to WHO in January 2007 to assist in moving the planning for the Technical Meeting forward. “The last major WHO event that brought together international experts to look at the status of school health was in 1995,” says Aldinger. “So much has happened in the meantime. The Technical Meeting on School Health will be an ideal venue for sharing strategies, creating connections and setting directions to advance school health initiatives for the next decade.”