A Lee

Abstract

Health promoting school (HPS) has been described as 'total environment' which provides more than just learning and teaching about health issues in classroom. HPS needs to develop a safe social and physical environment for the 'total population' of the school. Healthy City is an example of a macro-setting in comparison with HPS. It leans heavily upon creation of intersectoral collaboration to move it forward. HPS do not usually need the same degree of intersectoral collaboration so it would be launched more smoothly. The Hong Kong Healthy School Award Scheme builds on concepts of HPS, and provides a structured framework for the development as well as indicators for evaluation and monitoring. The scheme will also help to strengthen school-based management as it promotes staff development, parental education, involvement of whole school community, and linkage with different stakeholders. This will enable the participating schools creating 'learning perspective', 'community perspective', and 'capacity building' environment to improve both educational and health outcomes of students. The Healthy School Award Scheme would foster development of values and attitudes such as responsibility, and also enhance teaching and learning of other values-orientated studies such as life education, affective education, and environmental education. The Centre for Health Education and Health Promotion of the Chinese University of Hong Kong together with the Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau are the awarding bodies with endorsement from WHO Western Pacific Region. This is first territory wide 'Healthy Schools' movement that gained recognition form WHO by meeting the standards laid down by WHO. The recent baseline assessment of the participating schools showed that very few schools have comprehensive coverage of wide range of health education topics. Not many schools have developed a set of comprehensive curriculum for training of personal skills. The results also revealed that the schools should further develop the physical and social environment, and community partnership. The recent study on the health status of the students revealed that depression and life satisfaction were associated with exercise level; and lower the levels of physical activities, are more likely to have higher score on the depression, and lower score with life satisfaction. Therefore it is essential to promote health through school setting for positive youth development.