Youth health promotion and health promoting schools: what should be the aims?
The school plays a very important role in health education and promotion at the crucial stage of childhood and adolescence. It develops personal character, skills, attitude and physique, in addition to imparting knowledge. To sustain the concerted effort to address inter-wined social, educational, psychological and health needs of children, training and ongoing reinforcement must be given to teachers. A task force made up of parents, teachers, administrators, students and health professionals must be formed to develop core values, visions, goals and activities; and to provide new direction for health education and promotion. The 'Health Promoting Schools' Programme of the CUHK was launched in 1999 with the aim to promote physical, emotional and intellectual development of students through healthy and hygienic practices. The programme has also conducted researches on health of students, prioritise and evaluate relevant programmes. Recent research studies revealed that students in higher grades had more physical and psychological health problems, probably due to heavy workload and less emphasis on health education in their formal curriculum. Another research study has shown the lack of concrete school policies in health education. It is therefore important to develop policies, practices and structures, as well as regular curricular reviews to promote health of the school children. The "Health Promoting Schools' Programme has already initiated several district based health promotion programmes to pave the way for the formation of local task force on youth health promotion.
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Department of Community and Family Medicine, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 4th Floor, Lek Yuen Health Centre, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong. alee@cuhk.edu.hk
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D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D015438:Health Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006306:Health Surveys; D006723:Hong Kong; D006801:Humans; D016730:Program Development; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D012572:School Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*