The School Meal Coalition Secretariat encourages all governments to participate in the 2024 Global Survey of School Meal Programs. This survey, administered by the Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF), is the most comprehensive data collection on national and large-scale school feeding programs. Data collection is carried out in May and government-sourced information on the 2022 school year will be gathered. To be connected with a global survey associate and for additional support on this process, please contact [email protected]. To learn more about the survey, visit GCNF’s website.
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The report/discussion focused on school meals within the culture and tradition of the indigenous community of Quilombo do Campinho. Brazil. The Brazilian National School Feeding Programme (PNAE) is supported by a federal law that serves the public-school community in Brazil,. Under the national programme, among other important provisions, at least 30 percent of the funds transferred by the federal government to public schools for the implementation of school meals must be spent exclusively on purchases from family farmers, and the closer they are to the school, the better. Go to the report...
nThe Health in All Policies framework is used in the health sector to coordinate with other ministries and agencies. The Canada/Quebec National Collaborating Centre on Public Health Policies facilitates the Global HiAP Coalition and its Canadian counterpart. The Centre recently organized a webinar in five local examples of how the health sector can reach out to others. Go to the recording and slides.
This brief calls attention to the need for dedicated resources and policies that address the unique needs of young children and their families, caregivers, and communities during acute emergencies. By raising awareness and providing evidence-based recommendations, the brief aims to encourage collaboration across different sectors and stakeholders to work together to create fundamental, lasting changes. Go to the brief.
Living in a democratic and always changing world, children have to learn the basic facts about their rights and to acquire the needed democratic life skills. Such democratic life skills can be reinforced through the surrounding environment itself, such schools. A Child Friendly School is a framework designed by UNICEF as the answer to the above needs. A Child Friendly School is a school that recognizes and nurtures the achievement of children's basic rights. A school is considered child friendly when it provides a safe, clean, healthy and protective environment for all children Go to the article
Join KM Gopakumar, legal advisor at Third World Network, and Jyotsna Singh from the People’s Health Movement as they delve into the ongoing negotiations surrounding the Pandemic Treaty. Over the past two years, World Health Organization members have been discussing a new document aimed at strengthening global pandemic response, drawing from lessons learned during the COVID-19 crisis. However, with the deadline for submitting a draft text to the World Health Assembly approaching in May 2024, high-income countries seem poised to obstruct efforts by those in the Global South to foster solidarity and collaboration in pandemic response. Go to the recording.
The Caribbean Observatory on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and several other organizations have published a policy guide on Towards a better future: Enacting policy and legislation to guarantee comprehensive sexuality education for youth in and out-of school. Go to the resource.
The School Threat Assessment Toolkit is designed to aid schools in employing behavioral threat assessment (TA) and management as part of a comprehensive violence prevention strategy. Authored primarily by Dewey Cornell and Jennifer Maeng, and with input from school safety leaders, experts, government agencies, and the US National Center for School Safety, the toolkit offers guidance on training, implementation, and assessment of school TA teams. It aims to ensure fidelity to student rights while providing practical tools like documents, forms, videos, and additional resources to support schools’ efforts. Go to the resource.
News Story (Feb 17/24) :WHO chief's dire warning: Disease X outbreak 'a matter of when, not if'5/1/2024 Fox News: Tedros said he issued a similar warning in 2018 and was proven right when COVID-19 struck. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus has issued a new warning about the likelihood of Disease X breaking out, telling global world leaders it is "a matter of when, not if" a new pathogen and pandemic will strike. Tedros, who goes by his first name and is not a medical doctor, told attendees at the World Government Summit in Dubai earlier his week he gave a similar warning in 2018 that a pandemic was likely to hit, and he was proven right with the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus. Complaining that the world is still ill-prepared for a new pandemic, Tedros once again touted the urgent need for a global treaty to be agreed upon by May and dismissed suspicions of it being a WHO power grab as outlandish.Go to news story
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released the web version of the second edition of its Global Accelerated Action for the Health of Adolescents (AA-HA!) guidance. Updated statistics on adolescent health and navigation within the comprehensive document are provided in the updated edition. Chapter 5.3 describes implementation strategies for key sectors including education. This chapter also provides links to additional SH resources published by WHO. Go to the full document here.
From the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report team. This is part of a series of blogs, aiming to inform about some of the core challenges and solutions to collecting quality data, which were further discussed in depth at the first ever Conference on Education Data and Statistics, convened by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) from 7-9 February 2024. Read the four part series here:
This second edition of the SDG 4 Scorecard demonstrates the efforts that countries have been making since 2015 towards achieving their 2025 and 2030 national benchmarks – their targets, which represent their intended contributions to the achievement of SDG 4, the global education goal.. More information here.
OECD has announced the dates for a series of webinars on "mindshifts" towards the future. “OECD Learning & Teaching Compass: MindShift through Upgrading Perspectives in Education”.
The titles, dates and registration links are below. (Go to this calendar for updated links)
INEE and the ERICC Research Consortium are pleased to invite you to a webinar on data systems in education in conflict and crisis settings. Hosted by the ERICC Research Consortium and INEE, this event brings together experts to engage in dialogue on data needs in education in conflict and crisis education, as data issues play a crucial role in driving evidence-based educational decision-making and the design of policies and programs. 28 Feb 2024, 1-2pm UTC Register here.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently published two new resources to support citizen engagement in evidence-informed policy-making in the health field. The first is an overview document that introduces the concept and principles of citizen engagement, its benefits, and challenges. The second is a guide on how to organize mini-publics, a specific form of citizen engagement that involves a representative sample of citizens in structured and facilitated discussions on a policy issue. Join the upcoming WHO webinar, “Citizen Engagement in Evidence-informed Policy-making - Launch of the WHO Overview Document and Mini-Publics Guide”. This event will take place on 29 February 2024, from 14:00 to 15:30 hrs CET. Register here.
A systematic review of hand hygiene programs in schools found that "School-based hand-hygiene interventions are effective in reducing infection-related absence." However the review also found "found no evidence to support the interventions currently recommended in a range of international guidelines. The meta-analysis indicated that school-based hand-hygiene interventions lead to a significant decrease in RT and GI illness-related absence, and so should be implemented, despite high heterogeneity. The optimal behavioural contents of this intervention remains unclear.. The review found some evidence that using more than one behaviour change technique is more effective. Utilising both ‘risk perception’ and ‘instruction’ in intervention design, and targeting both children and adults is also likely more effective. Acces the review at: Hoyle E, Davies H, Bourhill J, Roberts N, Lee JJ, & Albury C. (2023). Effectiveness of hand-hygiene interventions in reducing illness-related absence in educational settings in high income countries: Systematic review and behavioural analysis. Journal of Public Health
A systematic review of 22 studies reported that "Interventions to reduce stigma associated with mental health conditions showed small, short-term effects in young people (post intervention but not at follow up) . Education-based interventions showed relatively more significant effects than other types of interventions." Effective intervention components were educational approaches, including lessons, curriculum that consisted of modules explaining stigma-related concepts and strategies, activities such as video games and facilitated discussion, which could be effective in reducing stigma through correcting misinformation on mental health. The authors observed that "It has been argued that it is often ineffective to reduce stigma in the general public using educational programmes alone and that contact-based interventions are more successful than education-based interventions for adults (Corrigan et al., 2012). Our review showed the opposite findings for young people." Access the review at: Song N, Hugh-Jones S, West RM, Pickavance J, & Mir G. (2023). The effectiveness of anti-stigma interventions for reducing mental health stigma in young people: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Global Mental Health, 10, e39.
aA 2023 umbrella review of systematic reviews found that obesity prevention interventions with a nutrition component had little effect on body mass index measures for most age groups of young people. The study found Thirteen SRs examined the impact of obesity prevention interventions with nutrition in the school setting in all age groups combined. The umbrella review concluded that "Based on the current evidence, in all age groups combined, nutrition and physical activity interventions in the school setting may not reduce BMI z-score, BMI, or overweight or obesity prevalence. Interventions in school settings likely reduce BMI z-score in children 6–12 years old." This finding suggests that school nutrition programs should focus on primary school. Access the review at: Rozga M, & Handu D. (2023). Nutrition interventions for pediatric obesity prevention: An umbrella review of systematic reviews. Nutrients, 15(24).
A systematic review published in International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion found that educational/behavioral strategies and multifaceted programs are effective in reducing RTIs among young adults and adolescents. However, there is a lack of studies on other potential interventions. The quality of the included studies was moderate. Access the journal article at Malekpour F, Afshari M, Kharghani Moghadam SM, Cheraghi Z, Bashirian S, Moeini B, et al. (2023). The effect of intervention programs on road traffic injury prevention among adolescents and young people: A systematic review. , 1-9.
A systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines among children and adolescents against SARS-CoV-2 variants.This meta-analysis presents moderate-quality evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine is effective in safeguarding children and adolescents from the SARS-CoV-2 variant. Being fully vaccinated may offer greater protection than being partially vaccinated. Access journal article at Lan Z, Yan J, Yang Y, Tang Z, Guo X, Wu Z, et al. (2023). Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines among children and adolescents against SARS-CoV-2 variants: A meta-analysis. European Journal of Pediatrics, 182(12), 5235-5244.
The sixth International Day of Education will be celebrated on 24 January 2024 under the theme “learning for lasting peace”. The world is seeing a surge of violent conflicts paralleled by an alarming rise of discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and hate speech. The impact of this violence transcends any boundary based on geography, gender, race, religion, politics, offline and online. An active commitment to peace is more urgent today than ever: Education is central to this endeavor, as underlined by the UNESCO Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development. Learning for peace must be transformative, and help empower learners with the necessary knowledge, values, attitudes and skills and behaviours to become agents of peace in their communities. UNESCO is dedicating this year’s International Day of Education to the crucial role education and teachers play in countering hate speech, a phenomenon which has snowballed in recent years with the use of social media, damaging the fabric of our societies. More Information
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) will hold Consultations on a Global Digital Compact. The Consultations will convene as part of the preparatory process for the Summit of the Future. The expected Global Digital Compact will be annexed to the Summit of the Future’s outcome document, the Pact for the Future, if intergovernmentally agreed. The consultations will be led by the co-facilitators of the intergovernmental process on the Global Digital Compact, Anna Enstrom, Permanent Representative of Sweden to the UN, and Chola Milambo, Permanent Representative of Zambia to the UN.
Consultations will convene with Member States and observers on 12 February 2024, and with relevant stakeholders on 13 February 2024. A second round of consultations will take place for Member States and observers on 29 February, and for stakeholders on 1 March. The co-facilitators will also invite written input by 8 March 2024, to inform preparation of the zero draft of the Global Digital Compact. More information Following a Members States request to document and analyze successful country initiatives in multisectoral government action for the prevention and control of NCDs, WHO in 2022 held a call for submissions to collect relevant experiences. This online repository features the 95 examples from 46 countries initially assessed as part of the global mapping report. Schools are a hub for several examples but it takes time to sort through the content of the web site. Go to the Repository
An update from the Public Health Movement WHO Tracker notes that "The latest report from WHO on immunisation coverage (EB154/9, to be considered at the WHO Executive Board from 22 January) describes a very uneven recovery following the Covid pandemic. Challenges persist in meeting global coverage targets, in eliminating diseases like polio and measles, and in preventing large outbreaks. Zero-dose children stands at 14.1 million (down from year previous but more than 2019) and progress has stalled in low-income countries and in the African region. The report notes the "At the start of 2023, global partners launched the “Big Catch-Up” initiative to support countries to reach children who had missed out on vaccination during the pandemic years, and to restore the immunization trajectory toward Immunization Agenda 2030 goals. See the report Progress towards Global Immunization submitted to to the WHO Board.
DevelopmentAid, in collaboration with Ali Al Mokdad, Co-Lead of the AI Working Group within NetHope, will be holding a webinar to delve into the transformative effects of AI on key roles within the NGO sector. The event aims to provide NGO professionals with insights into how, rather than replacing jobs, AI can enhance and revolutionize them, empowering workers to focus on the more strategic and impactful aspects of their roles. Date: 25 January at 4 PM (Brussels Time) / 10 AM (Washington DC Time) Register here
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