“It’s amazing how your first experience defines you,” says German-born Carmen Aldinger, a researcher, writer, and project director for EDC’s international school health programs.
Aldinger grew up and worked on her family’s farm near Stuttgart, discovering her love for writing as a secretary for a youth farming group. “As farmers in Germany, we were supposed to work physically and practically,” she says. “But I was determined to make a living as a writer. That’s how my interest in youth leadership and writing began.”
A government youth exchange program brought Aldinger to Maryland, where she eventually attended Towson University. It was there that she found her calling. “I knew from my first class in health education, that that was what I wanted to do.”
As a graduate student at Yale University, Aldinger interned with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva—an organization she still collaborates with since joining EDC in 1998. Today, she travels the world working with governments, United Nations agencies, and communities to advocate for health promotion through schools and school systems. Her projects include a health-promoting schools program in Zhejiang Province, China, and a training module in the Caribbean to involve people living with HIV and AIDS in the education ministries’ HIV awareness and prevention efforts.
Your project work to promote global health through schools has taken you to many continents and countries. Is there a common thread in this work?
Whether we’re in China or South Africa or the Caribbean, we’ve seen how schools can be centers for social development in the community. They’re a place where people who are concerned about students’ health and family health can come together. They’re also a place where governments and policymakers can reach people in the communities.
The concept of health-promoting schools takes into consideration school health policies, a healthy physical and psychosocial environment, skills-based health education, and school health and nutrition services. Our goal is to help countries promote health through schools as an integral part of the education system, not just an add-on.
No matter where we work, it’s integral for us to involve the people who live and work in the local communities and schools. We need their input and participation to help us find effective and lasting solutions to the challenges their communities face.
What projects are you working on now?
I have been co-editing a book of school health case studies from 26 countries. It’s titled Case Studies in Global School Health Promotion: From Research to Practice, and it will be published by Springer this spring.
I’m also co-directing the TEACH-VIP E-Learning project in partnership with WHO, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We are transforming a face-to-face comprehensive violence and injury prevention and control curriculum into online lessons.
What’s the most gratifying part of your work?
My work can have an impact all around the world—at both the government and ministry levels where policies are made, and on the community level, where real change happens. I’m grateful that my work enables me to try to understand poverty around the world and to do what I can through my research and writing to change it.
I also enjoy meeting and working with people in many communities, whether it’s a fishing village in Taiwan or a small school in the Bahamas. And I am still gratified when my work with EDC helps countries and communities use schools as a means to get people out of poverty so they can make healthier choices in their lives.