1. WHO Global Conference and Draft Statement on Health Promotion- Endorse/send a message to include all settings/school health promotion

    The World Health Organizations is developing a consensus statement to be endorsed by the delegates to their Global Conference on Health Promotion being held in Shanghai. The lengthy statement is generally a good one, with several commitments to be endorsed by participants, including one to respond to urbanization by working through revived efforts to work with the global Healthy Cities movement.  However, the statement makes a serious factual and strategic error where it states that cities are to be the “entry point” (and governance structure) for working with other settings such as schools, hospitals, prisons, workplaces, pre-schools, senior centres, families, and virtual social settings on the Internet in order to promote “social, welfare and education policies”.  The alignment of these various multiple, overlapping settings, agencies and structures requires a “whole of government” approach through several ministries and sectors, not just cities, that recognizes the inherent complexities and draws from the emerging and existing knowledge about systems science and organizational development. In essence, this school-focused response to the draft WHO statement suggests that the WHO/Health Ministries revive their commitment to working in all settings where people live, learn, work and play (as per the Ottawa Charter, 1986), act upon the considerable evidence and experience that such work in schools is effective (See Appendix) and use the emerging research on ecological approaches as well as existing knowledge on organizational development to use systems-based strategies and systems science to guide and structure health promotion efforts at all levels.

We ask organizations and individuals to:

Endorse the brief summary paragraph below (or develop something similar) and send it to  healthpromotion@who.int by October 15, with a copy to ISHN (dmccall@internationalschoolhealth.org)
Summary Paragraph/Message to WHO/Health Ministries:

Sc  Schools have been and will continue to be a primary, critically important, setting for health promotion and social development. Education has been universally recognized by UN agencies and the UN leadership as the backbone of any progress to be made in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. All settings in communities, regions and countries will need to be supported by the WHO and Health Ministries if health promotion policies, programs and strategies are to be successful.

SSSee more details about this request, along with supporting arguments and evidence in the attached document.  If you also work with other settings that promote health, you may want to consider endorsing this similar statement from a group concerned with all settings.

  1. Global Working Group on Health Literacy/Life Skills/Social Inclusion

    ISHN is working with several members of the FRESH Partnership, a committee of UN agencies, donor organizations and global NGO’s that shares a concern for school health promotion and social development, to establish and facilitate a Global Working Group that will develop policy and curriculum/program alternatives to teaching these broad areas of learning in a core curriculum on health/personal/social development  as well as across the core subjects in an inter-disciplinary manner. Teacher education and development as well as alternatives for assessing and monitoring student learning are included.Please see the attached mandate for this Global Working Group attached. If you have any suggestions or would like to participate in the planned series of webinars and web meetings as well as an eventual large global conference, please reply to dmccall@internationalschoolhealth.org

    3. ISHN Report to Subscribers-Members – Walking the Talk about all Sources of Knowledge/Global Knowledge Development Consortium

    For several years now, the International School Health Network (ISHN) has identified “research reviews” as a highlighted feature of our weekly and monthly reports drawn from our monitoring of over 400 journals, as well as over 150 social media sources and over 100 mass media outlets. Like many others, our attention was drawn to reviews of intervention research studies, preferably in random, controlled trials (RCT’s) through the methodology of a systematic review.

    Then we realized that we have been making a big mistake. Despite the fact that we have stated in our Wikipedia style web site that we valued and used “research-based, data-driven and experience-tested” knowledge as the basis of our work, we have in fact, used only intervention research, primarily from RCT’s that has been collated into systematic research reviews.
    We have not really been paying attention to articles and reports from various regular and respected surveys of behaviours and conditions, from reviews of the research on social influences, social determinants or school factors, of cross-sectional and longitudinal cohort studies, of analysis and commentaries on well-established programs or strategies that have been implemented in several jurisdictions and contexts and more.
    So we have changed our method for extracting and highlighting various articles from the 400+ journals we monitor.  We now note “Data Reviews”, “Policy-Program Reviews”, “Population-Context Reviews” and “Organizational Development-System Reviews” as well as “Research Reviews” that cover not only intervention but also prevalence, causes/correlations and other compilations of the various research studies.

    We use twitter-type short hand/abbreviated URL’s to identify these various reviews in an easy to read format, with a web link to the original article or report. Here are some examples.

  • Data Review (2016) Substance Use Patterns Among Adolescents in Europe: A Latent Class Analysis http://ow.ly/Tuhx303mj0w
  • Research Review (2016) Alcohol and substance use prevention programs for youth in Hawaii and Pacific Islands http://ow.ly/3uE6303vvhb
  • Data Review (2016) Suicide in children and young people in England: a consecutive case series http://ow.ly/RfWW303AcFY
  • Research Review (2016) Suicide and poverty in low-income and middle-income countries http://ow.ly/C0zW303AdyN

Please see the attached report for a more detailed description of this new approach to identifying research highlights.

We will also be using this compilation/analysis in the next stage of our Delphi and On-Line Consultation on What We Know and Need to know in School Health Promotion and Social Development. As you may recall, this consultation will verify, compile, publish and disseminate a significant number of statements about what we know as well as a lengthy list of research issues and questions. Our plan is to take up these research questions identified in the Delphi Consultation through a Global Knowledge Development Consortium that will bring together and facilitate communications and cooperation among existing research centres and programs, research funders and others in order to address the research topics identified in this Delphi and on-line consultation. If you are interested in learning kore about this Consortium, contact dmccall@internationalschoolhealth.org

4. Next Webinar in the Series on Low Resource Countries- Hand-washing Programs (17 October at 8:00 am Washington DC time)

Plan to participate in the next webinar in a series on School Health & Nutrition programs in low resource countries. Just click on this web link a few minutes before the start of the webinar:

https://meet.lync.com/savechildrenusa/ahurlburt/F98L02R7

Monday, 17 October 2016
(13:00, London, UK, 8:00 am Washington DC time)		 Global Handwashing Day: Fit for Schools – A model to promote hand washing

  • Nicole Siegmund, Principal Advisor of the Regional Fit for School Program​, ​GIZ

Basic WASH infrastructures in schools are prerequisites for positive hygiene behaviour and habit formation and address key determinants of health. The Fit for Schools Programmesupports Ministries of Education across Southeast Asia to transform schools into healthy learning environments and to institutionalize simple and cost effective interventions that address some of the most prevalent diseases among school children. Nicole will discuss how the Fit for Schools Programme builds on existing systems and resources toenable the education sector withinthe region toimplement and manage sustainable school health programmes. She’ll be drawing on examples of good practice from countries such as Lao PDR to illustrate how the approach canbe scaled up at a districtlevelthrough effectivegovernment support.

The webinar series on Low Resource Countries/School Health & Nutrition programs is being organized by members of the FRESH Partnership, including Save the Children, Partnership for Child Development, the UNESCO HIV Clearinghouse, the International School Health Network and others. The series is also being supported by the development of a corresponding series of Wikipedia style summaries, an extensive Bibliography/Toolbox and other online resources.

 To access the webinar on the day of the session, this Participants Link will be active about 15 minutes before the start of webinar. Come back to this webinars page and click on the link at that time.

The following readings are suggested for this webinar:

Comments and edits are invited on these draft summaries on WASH and hand-washing programs in schools, one of several “glossary terms” being developed for this series and discussion of SH&N programs in low resource countries.

For more resources and research on LRC/SH&N programs, go to the UNESCO HIV/Health Clearinghouse, this extensive LRC/SH&N Bibliography/Toolbox and this Knowledge Development Agenda/list of topics.