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FORUM KICKS OFF EXPANSION OF SCHOOL HEALTH PROGRAM

EXPANSION OF THE JAPAN-FUNDED Comprehensive School Health, Nutrition and Hygiene/School Feeding Programme (CSHNH/SFP) to at least three more SEAMEO member countries started with the UNESCO Sub-Regional Workshop on FRESH (Focusing Resources on Effective School Health) held November 17-21, 2003 at SEAMEO INNOTECH. The workshop was attended by more than 60 participants from Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines and experts from the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Children’s Fund, World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and UNESCO Asia Pacific Regional Bureau for Education.

The CSHNH/SFP is an international cooperation activity carried out in partnership with Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Implemented in Lao PDR, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand in 2003, it will expand in 2004 to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The project’s main activity is training appropriate personnel who will ensure that school health and nutrition issues are adequately addressed in national EFA plans under the framework of FRESH.

Launched at the World Education Forum in 2000, the FRESH initiative promotes an integrated approach to school health and nutrition for the school-aged child through activities implemented by UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank, World Health Organisation, Education International and the World Food Programme. FRESH will shed light on the linkages between good health and better learning and create a relevant model for interagency and intersectoral cooperation linked to other health education programmes supported by the United Nations, governments, NGOs and other partners in member countries.

As an initial step in the programme’s expansion, the workshop hosted by SEAMEO INNOTECH aimed to:

• raise awareness of participants on the important links between physical and emotional health, nutrition and education and the value of implementing comprehensive school health programmes as a strategy for achieving the goal of Education for All (EFA), and with the inclusion of children with special needs;
• promote integration of school health and nutrition concepts in national policies and plans for Education for All;
• discuss how issues such as school nutrition and HIV/AIDS prevention can be used as entry points for the development of a comprehensive school health programme (e.g. FRESH);
• share information and review the essential components and strategies on FRESH, as well as to present the activities of different FRESH partners, and to mobilise their cooperation in the targeted countries;
• identify potential research areas clarifying the relationships between health, cognitive development, school participation and academic achievement;
• encourage cooperation between representatives of the health and education sectors in order to promote comprehensive school health programmes;
• promote information exchange and networking between countries in the area of effective school health.

Philippine Education Secretary Edilberto De Jesus, represented by Undersecretary Ramon Bacani, opened the forum by pointing out that a country’s effort to improve economic productivity and increase learning achievement rests on a strong and healthy citizenry. For his part, Asian Development Bank’s Lead Education Specialist William Loxley echoed UNESCO’s declaration that “good health for students means higher school enrolment and attendance and optimizes government investment in education.”

One of the forum’s lead convenors, Dr. Jaime Galvez-Tan, who heads the National Institutes of Health Philippines, underscored the value of school health programs that have increasingly been recognized in the past decade, citing global cooperation and individual country initiatives, as well as the realization by international agencies of the importance of school health programs that serve as cost-effective public health interventions.

His paper asserts that in order to allow school health programs to be fully comprehensive and to allow the growth of already existing programs, the infrastructure for school health needs to be set up or improved. While recognizing basic framework of policies, resources and organizational structures and systems that are already in place, he reiterated the need to create and replicate these structures in different levels, pointing out the need for a strong national leadership at the same time. This calls for interagency cooperation among major stakeholders including non-governmental organizations. In the international front, Dr. Tan pointed out that, in the same way that emphasis on multi-stakeholder cooperation is placed on the different levels of school health infrastructure, so too is the ardent need for convergence among international agencies.

In his workshop summation, Dr. Tan recounted successful efforts already undertaken in school health and nutrition. These include established frameworks for program development; strong support from international, government, non-government and private sectors for the school health movement; and structures for policy development and program implementation. Future efforts, he said, need to be concentrated on improving the participation of children on matters that affect them, sustaining leadership in school health, actively generating resources for school health, and sharing information and experiences.

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