Global Standards for Health Promoting Schools

Over the past two years, the Centre for Adolescent Health (CAH) led by Professor Susan Sawyer from the Department of Paediatrics has led a body of work for WHO and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that recently culminated in the launch of the first ever Global Standards and Indicators for Health Promoting Schools and Systems and an accompanying Implementation Guidance.

Siting within the WHO and UNESCO initiative of “Making every school a Health Promoting School”, a United Nations collaboration that includes UNICEF, UNFPA, UNAIDS and UNRWA, the CAH was engaged to review current policies and evidence, and to develop new global standards, indicators, and an implementation guidance for Health Promoting Schools (HPS).

The CAH developed eight standards which provide a vision and framework to guide governments and school leadership efforts to support implementation, and tools to identify areas that require policy development and increasing commitment, investment, resources and stakeholder engagement. The standards and benchmarking framework support the creation of ‘health promoting schools,’ which equally foster health and learning in all aspects of school life. See Making every school a health-promoting school - The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health