School health services

School Health Services are services from medical, teaching and other professionals applied in or out of school to improve the health and well-being of children and in some cases whole families. These services have been developed in different ways around the globe but the fundamentals are constant ... the early detection, correction, prevention or amelioration of disease, disability and abuse from which school aged children can suffer.

Healthy children learn better. School health and nutrition (SHN) interventions have been shown to improve not only children’s health and nutrition, but also their learning potential and life choices both in the short- and long-term. As such, they are recognised as making a significant contribution towards countries’ efforts to achieve Education for All (EFA) and their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Unesco Tools

Unesco has published a set of tools, to support the FRESH framework, to guide those wishing to set up school health services around the world. Designed primarily for developing nations, these tools can be of universal use [http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=35173&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html] .The main emphasis of these tool is on:
*HIV/AIDS
*Food and nutrition
*Helminths and hygiene
*Malaria
*Violence
*Drugs, tobacco and alcohol

United States

School health services are well developed in the United Sates. Central guidelines are provided by "Making Health Academic" but each state and within that each school board has adopted its own specific methods.

Making Health Academic [http://www2.edc.org/makinghealthacademic/about.asp]

This is a five year project funded by CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) designed to enable all schools to be part of a co-ordinated school health program. The project is built around the fact that six preventable behaviours, mainly learned in childhood and youth, account for most of the serious illnesses and premature deaths in the United States; these are: [http://www2.edc.org/makinghealthacademic/cshp.asp#rationale]

Examples of existing services

*Massachusetts. An example from a maritime state is [http://www.mass.gov/dph/fch/schoolhealth/index.htm] where a typical mission statement starts "School Health Services fosters the growth, development and educational achievement of Massachusetts' students by promoting their health and wellbeing ... "
*New Mexico. An example from a southern state is [http://www.healthierschools.org/] where an interesting "yucca model of coordinated school health" is used to help visualize the inter-relationship of the services.

Relevant US Wikipedia links

*National Assembly on School-Based Health Care
*American School Health Association

United Kingdom

The health of children and youth in the UK is mainly the responsibility of the NHS, for example child health screening [http://www.nsc.nhs.uk/ch_screen/child_ind.htm] and advice for parents of overweight children [http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=823] . School based services are therefore more limited than in the US.

Examples of existing services

*England - Warrington [http://www.warrington.gov.uk/learning/school_health.asp]
*Northern Ireland [http://www.sebt.n-i.nhs.uk/index2.html]
*Scotland [http://www.sciennes.edin.sch.uk/handbook/healthservice.html]

Other countries

School health systems are expanding in low- and middle-income countries. Information on school health in these countries is collated on the Schools and Health website [http:www.schoolsandhealth.org] maintained by the Partnership for Child Development. A database of School Health and Nutrition (SHN) Programmes in low and middle income countries can be found on the site:
* [http://www.schoolsandhealth.org/Pages/Country.aspx SHN Country Programme Database]

Examples of existing services

*Australia [http://www.health.wa.gov.au/services/category.cfm?Topic_ID=6]
*Canada [http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/dca-dea/7-18yrs-ans/comphealth_e.html]
*Ireland [http://www.dohc.ie/public/information/childrens_health/school_health_services.html]
*Nigeria has a non-profit NGO dedicated to improving the health of Nigerian adolescents. [http://www.actionhealthinc.org/]
*Singapore [http://www.hpb.gov.sg/hpb/default.asp?pg_id=1161]
*Pakistan [http://ihspakistan.com/schoolhealth.html]