(An item from the ISHN Member information service) University-school district partnerships in the implementation of comprehensive school health programs proved to be effective in Taiwan. An article in Issue #4, 2015 of Health Education Research examined whether expanding the support for this initiative was effective in advancing HPS implementation, perceived HPS impact and perceived HPS efficacy. "In 2011, the Taiwan government expanded its support of school–district/university partnership programs that promote the implementation of the evidenced-based Health Promoting Schools (HPS) program. In 2011 and 2013, a total of 647 and 1195 schools, respectively, complemented the questionnaire. Univariate analysis results indicated that the HPS implementation levels for six components were significantly increased from 2011 to 2013. These components included school health policies, physical environment, social environment, teaching activities and school–community relationships. Participant teachers also reported significantly greater levels of perceived HPS impact and HPS efficacy after the expansion of support for school–district/university partnership programs. Multivariate analysis results indicated that after controlling for school level, HPS funding and HPS action research approach variables, the expansion had a positive impact on increasing the levels of HPS implementation, perceived HPS impact and perceived HPS efficacy." Read more>>
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(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Several of the articles in Issue #7, 2015 of Psychology in the Schools examine the role that school nurses play with other school personnel. The introduction to the speacial issue notes the lack of cooperation between nurses and mental health personnel. "The impetus for this special issue was the lack of research focused on the collaboration of school personnel (i.e., school psychologists and special education teachers) and school nurses. It is surprising that highly recognized professions working within schools, and who often work with same children, rarely collaborate with the goal of enhancing student learning. Although it is common for school psychologists to request vision and hearing examinations or to consult with school nurses regarding medication, active involvement of school nurses during the evaluation and classification process appears limited. In addition, school nurses appear to have limited input during the development and implementation of interventions. The primary aim of this special issue is to demonstrate how school personnel and school nurses can collaborate when developing prevention programs, addressing chronic health needs, and addressing the health needs of children with special needs. Another unique aspect of this special issue is that several of the articles were co-authored by a school nurse or nurse and a school psychologist." The articles in the special issue deal with topics such as continuum of care, identification and evaluation of autistic students, bullying prevention and response, students with disabilities, diabetes and other chronic diseases, responding to crises and roles within comprehensive school mental health promotion programs. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Several studies have shown that LGBT senior high school students experience higher rates of homelessness than their heterosexual peers. Moreover, LGBQ high school students are more likely to stay in riskier locations (eg, with a stranger) and less likely to stay in a shelter. Some studies show that 40% of homeless youth are LGBT (http://usich.gov/issue/lgbt_youth/lgbtq_youth_homelessness_in_focus/). This is likely to occur when the young person discloses their orientation and family members are not supportive, or even hostile. An article in the August 2015 Issue of Journal of School Health tested whether these trends also apply to middle school students. "Using representative data, we examined sexual identity and homelessness among Los Angeles Unified School District middle school students. Nearly 10% of middle school students identified as LGBQ and 23.5% experienced at least 1 night of homelessness during the previous year. Contrary to high school data, LGBQ students did not experience higher rates of homelessness overall. However, when limiting the sample to students who had experienced homelessness, LGBQ students were more than 5 times as likely as heterosexual students to have stayed in a public place and 63% as likely to have stayed in a shelter." the authors conclude that "Lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning students are more likely to experience public homelessness. Schools must implement homelessness surveillance systems to assist in identifying early episodes of homelessness, thereby reducing the likelihood of poor physical and mental health outcomes associated with chronic homelessness. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #7, 2015 of The Lancet Global Health, written by the Assistant Director of PAHO, the regional office for WHO in the Americas agrees witb the assertion made in the May 2015 issue of that Journal. (ISHN highlighted that earlier article in our weekly report for May 25-31, 2015. We have reposted that item into this blog here) The earlier article " reports on an interdisciplinary analytical review of the SDG process, in which experts in different SDG areas identified potential interactions through a series of interdisciplinary workshops. This process generated a framework that reveals potential conflicts and synergies between goals, and how their interactions might be governed. We noted that this call for integrated system-based responses underlines the need for the global dialogue that ASCD, Education International and ISHN have stimulated in regards to integrating health and social programs within the education systems. The PAHO article notes that "Greater synergies between health and other sectors could be achieved by framing the SDGs in such a way that their attainment requires policy coherence and shared solutions across multiple sectors; that is a Health-in-All-Policies approach" In essence, the educator led dialogue on school health promotion might be summarized with this slogan; a Health in All Policies approach will require that Health is in (actively, with personnel and funding) in all sectors (HiAS). Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in May 2015 Issue of The Lancet Global Health underlines the need and huge challenges in aligning the work on the 17 SD Goals recently adopted by the UN. The article also underlines the need for the global dialogue that ASCD, Education International and ISHN have stimulated in regards to integrating health and social programs within the education systems. The article " reports on an interdisciplinary analytical review of the SDG process, in which experts in different SDG areas identified potential interactions through a series of interdisciplinary workshops. This process generated a framework that reveals potential conflicts and synergies between goals, and how their interactions might be governed. The 17 SDGs are represented in three concentric layers. In the inner layer we find the people-centred goals that aim to deliver individual and collective wellbeing. The wellbeing goals are supported by second-level goals that relate to the production, distribution, and delivery of goods and services including food, energy, clean water, and waste and sanitation services in cities and human settlements (ISHN suggests that equitable and inclusive education systems is better placed here). We call these infrastructure goals to deliver the wellbeing goals and provide a platform for delivering the wellbeing goals. The figure's outer layer contains three natural environment goals; natural resources and public goods in land, ocean, and air, including biodiversity and climate change.In our framework, the middle layer, infrastructure goals, represent a domain for global development goal setting with particularly strong effects on inner-level and outer-level goals. A crucial lack of potential synergies at the level of infrastructure goals is compounded by governance issues at this level. Here decisions are typically taken by powerful elites and technical experts. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) The implementation, scaling up, maintenance and sustainability of individual programs as well as multi-intervention approaches such as comprehensive school health promotion requires new frameworks and better ways to understand the complex interactions at multiple levels in several systems. An article in Issue #5, 2015 of Prevention Science helps us toward that goal, as it describes the implementation and sustainability of a Social-Emotional Learning program in four schools in Wales. "his paper draws upon Rogers (2003) Diffusion of Innovations Theory to explain the adoption, implementation and discontinuance of a SEL intervention. A pragmatic, formative process evaluation was conducted in alignment with phase 1 of the UK Medical Research Council’s framework for Developing and Evaluating Complex Interventions. Employing case-study methodology, qualitative data were generated with four socio-economically and academically contrasting secondary schools in Wales implementing the Student Assistance Programme. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 programme stakeholders. Data suggested that variation in implementation activity could be largely attributed to four key intervention reinvention points, which contributed to the transformation of the programme as it interacted with contextual features and individual needs. These reinvention points comprise the following: intervention training, which captures the process through which adopters acquire knowledge about a programme and delivery expertise; intervention assessment, which reflects adopters’ evaluation of an intervention in relation to contextual needs; intervention clarification, which comprises the cascading of knowledge through an organisation in order to secure support in delivery; and intervention responsibility, which refers to the process of assigning accountability for sustainable delivery." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An editorial and accompanying article on the impact of a program to prevent school violence in Uganda is both starling and controversial. It is so because the problem being addressed includes violence perpetrated by teachers. The editorial states" Still, despite its impressive findings (Of the Good School Toolkit) —a significantly lower rate of violence was reported in intervention schools relative to controls after 18 months, with no apparent adverse effects of the intervention—an astute reader will observe that the total efficacy of the intervention is modest. Even after this rigorous school-based intervention, almost a third of primary school children in the intervention group of the trial still reported one or more episodes of physical violence in the past week. This is violence perpetrated by school staff—acts that in other jurisdictions and countries could lead to severe reprimands, dismissal, or even incarceration. 434 children were referred to child protective services over the course of the trial, representing one in nine trial participants.". The study examined 42 randomly selected primary schools (clusters) from 151 schools in Luwero District, Uganda. The researchers report "We randomly assigned 21 schools to receive the Good School Toolkit and 21 to a waitlisted control group in September, 2012. The intervention was implemented from September, 2012, to April, 2014. Owing to the nature of the intervention, it was not possible to mask assignment. The primary outcome, assessed in 2014, was past week physical violence from school staff, measured by students' self-reports using the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Child Abuse Screening Tool—Child Institutional." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) "The weekly epidemiological record of the World Health Organisation 15th May 20151 states that ‘the cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) recently exported to other countries have not resulted in sustained onward transmission to persons in close contact with these cases on aircraft or in the respective countries outside the Middle East.’ This situation has changed rapidly and remarkably. Five days after the publication of this report, the first case of a MERS-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection in Seoul, South Korea was reported...". This first sentence in an article in the July 2015 Issue of International Journal of Infectious Diseases got our attention. It is noteworthy that South Korea closed 2700 schools quickly during the outbreak. In discussions with Toronto public health and school officials after the SARS outbreak, we learned that closure of schools was difficult due to poor communications and unclear definitions of decision-making roles. The authors of the MERS article conclude that " Moving forward, it is critical that global efforts are focussed urgently on the basic science and on clinical and public health research so that the exact mode of transmission to and between humans, and new drugs and other therapeutic interventions and vaccines can be developed6, 7. Two coronaviruses, SARS-CoV and now MERS-CoV, which cause severe respiratory disease with high mortality rates emerged within the past two decades10, reinforcing the need for clinically efficacious antivirals targeting coronaviruses. Lessons learnt from the recent Ebola Virus Disease could also be applied to MERS11. Whilst MERS does not yet constitute an International Public Health Emergency the Korean outbreak is an extraordinary event." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in July 2015 Issue of Frontiers in Public Health: Child Health & Human Development describes how such school meal programs can positively affect student friendships and reduce bullying. "The aim of the current paper is to investigate whether attendance at BCs and ASCs has an impact on children’s friendship quality and experiences of peer victimization. BC attendees, ASC attendees, and non-attendees completed the Friendship Qualities Scale and the Multidimensional Peer Victimization Scale (MPVS) at two time points. Time-1 data were collected 2 months after the introduction of school clubs. Time-2 data were then collected on the same measures again 6 months later. Results of the analyses of Time-1 data showed no significant differences between groups on any of the measures at Time-1. However, at Time-2, BC attendees showed improved levels of friendship quality compared to the other two groups. Moreover, analysis of the MPVS data at Time-2 showed that children who attended BC or ASC experienced a decline in victimization across time. The current findings suggest that BC attendance facilitates the quality of children’s relationships with their best friend over time. Additionally, attendance at a breakfast or ASC was associated with a reduction in victimization over time. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A blog post this week from Sean Slade of ASCD reminds us why we,proponents of health/personal/social education need to be more engaged in the global debate about the purposes of education now underway around the world. We have noted the current legislative debates now underway in England and the USA in this blog before. Thanks to ASCD, we can now add Australia to the list. In the review done for the Australian government, there are five purposes of education posited: (1) to help students develop practical skills and focus on work-related outcomes, (2) to prepare students to deal with current issues affecting the well-being of society, (3) to help students develop by focusing on their individual needs, interests and learning styles, (4) to teach students about inequality and justice and (5) to introduce students to the accumulated knowledge of their society. These Australian goals are quite similar to a more traditional view of the intellectual (academic), social, vocational, custodial and accreditation functions of schooling. As Slade points out, they are also similar to the utilitarian, future-focused, personalized learning, core basics and classical views of education. His point, is that we need to debate these goals before we settle on the curricula, structures and other aspects of schooling. Proponents of health and social development will note that these concepts are missing or at best, implicit, in all of these goal statements. We need to be better engaged. Indeed, the UN agencies are close to closing the debates about educational goals as they clarify the meaning of a high quality education in Target 4.7 of the Framework for Action, a document that will go for UN approval this September. If you want to comment on the indicators being proposed for the final FFA document go this web page and scroll down to Target 4.7. (PS We suggest that you comment on the wording of the summary statement, where the word "sustainable" lifestyles was inserted to replace an earlier version of "healthy" lifestyles. Read more>>
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