School Health

Since 1991, EDC staff have served as consultants and advisors to the World Health Organization (WHO) and have authored numerous publications for WHO on global school health issues. In 1998, HHD was designated as the WHO Collaborating Center to Promote Health Through Schools and Communities. The Center’s goal is to deliver services that strengthen the capacities of schools and communities worldwide to promote the healthy development of students, school personnel, families, and surrounding communities.

The goal of this project is to pilot an innovative school violence prevention program called Voices Against Violence/Voces Contra La Violencia. This video-based program focuses on the critical, but often neglected, role youth and adult bystanders, including parents, can play in preventing school violence. As part of the Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention, Voices Against Violence/Voces Contra La Violencia has been implemented in multiple classrooms at a middle school in New York City. Strategies for involving parents as well as youth and school staff have been explored.

Education International (EI), EDC, and the World Health Organization work with teacher-union affiliates in nearly 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Caribbean, and Latin America to prevent new HIV infections, increase the number of learners completing basic education, and mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS on achieving Education For All Goals. This work involves a range of activities including training, policy development, advocacy, research, publicity and communications.

EDC is developing an interactive, animated CD-ROM for high school students in West Africa to teach them about Pandemic H1N1 2009 influenza. Through this e-Learning multimedia product—with computer games and a comic style story—students will learn about the transmission and dangers of the H1N1 virus, necessary skills to protect themselves, and how to communicate with parents, relatives, and friends about the dangers of transmission and appropriate preventive actions.

EDC is facilitating a policy development project to promote mental health assessments and improve access to mental health services for youth suspended or expelled from California schools. After an analysis of current school district policies on suspension and expulsion from data and focus groups, EDC will determine policy and program recommendations that enable students to receive necessary mental health services in an effort to reduce dropout rates and disparities in access to services.

EDC is writing a manual on pandemic preparedness for schools in an effort to protect the health of students, staff, and families across the globe. It will be distributed through the World Health Organization. The manual is intended to help administrators and teachers with pandemic planning and response in schools. It emphasizes the need for school-based efforts to prevent the spread of influenza.

EDC is developing a web-based course on pandemic preparedness and response for communities. The primary audience is local decision-makers and practitioners, with additional modules for specific audiences.

Working with various partners in the Caribbean, EDC will develop a framework to monitor and evaluate the response to HIV and AIDS within the Caribbean’s education sector. The framework will be research-based and developed with extensive input from stakeholders so that it customized, user-friendly, and effective. EDC will also develop a tool to equip those in the education sector with the specific knowledge and skills to maximize the utility of the framework.

While research has identified a number of effective suicide prevention strategies, many have not been put into practice. Through this project, EDC will create toolkits with easy-to-use educational materials and interactive resources that will also focus on institutional and personal barriers that prevent suicide from being addressed in each setting, and provide motivation to create more positive environments.

Through this program 10,000 students in 12 schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa are receiving health education, health services, and computer education. A mobile van is traveling around to communities in the areas providing these services. EDC developed the health education curriculum, trained health educators, and is assisting in the planning and evaluation of this project for Mpilonhle, a South African NGO.