Strengthening Healthy Learning Systems: Highlights from our first Knowledge Exchange Residency

The Healthy Learning Systems team at the Centre for Adolescent Health, comprising Professor Susan Sawyer, Dr Monika Raniti and Dr Jennifer Dam, works with diverse stakeholders across education and health to advance research in whole-school approaches to improving adolescent health and wellbeing. In 2025, the team launched a Knowledge Exchange Residency, a new initiative designed to give researchers, educators, practitioners, and policy professionals an opportunity to work alongside our team over 1-3 months. The residency supports participants to cocreate practical outputs such as presentations, literature reviews, and policy documents, while contributing to global work on Health Promoting Schools.

The team was delighted to welcome  Dasha Uy as our inaugural resident. Dasha is a Senior Health Program Officer from the Philippines Department of Health and a DFAT Australia Awards Scholar, leading the national Healthy Learning Institutions (HLI)  program, which supports around 1,500 lastmile schools in geographically isolated and disadvantaged regions in the Philippines.

During her residency, Dasha focused on developing a framework to support a Community of Practice for educators in lastmile schools, aimed at strengthening the implementation and sustainability of the HLI program.

Following her residency, Dasha was successful in securing funding through Areté Ateneo’s Sandbox Residency to bring her proposal, now titled Project Kalinga, to life, marking a significant next step in her work to strengthen wellbeing and school climate in last mile school communities.

The Healthy Learning Systems team continues to work with Dasha as part of our wider network and looks forward to learning from Dasha’s insights as Project Kalinga evolves and generates new learnings from teachers and communities on the ground.