Health Promoting Schoolの概念と実践

Health Promoting School is an idea initially launched by World Health Organization (WHO) in order to promote people's health in communities. For most people on earth, most of risk factors to ischemic heart diseases, cerebrovasucular diseases, and some of malignant neoplasm are believed to be in every day's our own lives. In other words, people's lifestyle is key issue to prevent such diseases above, which are dominant causes of death in many countries and regions in the world, especially in industrialized countries. That is why Health Promoting School is important today, because most of risk factors to the human chronic diseases are affected by health education and promotion. In 1990s, some countries adopted Health Promoting School as pilot studies. WHO has been providing many educational materials as well as making important policies related to Health Promoting School, including WHO's Global School Health Initiative. Since late 1990s, some countries decided to adopt Health Promoting School Program as a national policy. In Western Pacific Region, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and others has started national program for Health Promoting School. We studied the backgrounds and some samples of Health Promoting Schools in particular countries as a part of the seminar in spring-summer semester in 2004. This short document is a summary of the seminar