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.

健康促進學校(HPS)是指不單純提供課堂上學習和教授健康知識的一個‘綜合環境’，HPS 需要為學校的整體人群建立一個可靠的社會和物質環境。“健康的城市”就是 HPS 宏觀配套措施的一個例子。它主要依靠創造交叉合作而促進 HPS 的發展。HPS 通常不需要相同層次的交叉合作，因而易於運作。香港健康學校授與計劃創立了 HPS 概念，並為其提供發展框架和評估、監測指標。此計劃也將幫助加強以學校為基礎的管理，促進員工發展、父母教育、整個學校社區的參與和不同受惠人士之間的聯繫。此可促進參與的學校創造‘學習理念’、‘社區理念’、和‘能力積累’環境來提高學生在教育和健康方面的收穫。健康學校授與計劃將加速了價值觀和態度、如責任心的發展，以及增強其他價值觀導向的教育與學習，如生活教育、情感教育和環境教育。香港中文大學健康教育、健康促進中心與香港教育統籌局一同成為由世界衛生組織(WHO)西太平洋地區批准的授權單位。這是第一個達到 WHO 標準而獲得其認可的地區性‘健康的學校’運動。近期，對參與學校的基線評估結果說明，只有很少的學校可以全面涉及廣泛的健康主題。不太多的學校建立了一套綜合的個人技能訓練課程。這些結果也說明學校應進一步發展物質和社會條件及社區夥伴關係。近來關於學生健康狀況的研究說明，抑鬱和生活滿意度與鍛煉水平緊密相關，體育活動水平越低，抑鬱評分就越高，生活滿意度評分就越低。因此，有必要通過學校設施促進學生健康，並朝向積極的青春期發展。