National Health-Promoting Schools Initiative Case Study

5.0 IMPACT HPSI has evidently met some of his objectives. It promoted building of partnerships between the health and education sectors with other governmental and nongovernmental sectors, United Nations organizations and the community at large. It also led to the development of a supportive environment, including empowerment of both students and staff and subordinate staff in being accountable for their health. Health promotion interventions have now become integral to school activities. (Tompa.et al, 2008).
5.1 Impact Evaluation A study was conducted in 2008 which covers knowledge, attitudes, practice and behaviour to scrutinise the impact through comparing schools implementing the Initiative with schools which are not, this aimed to assess:
• Willingness of the community to discuss and take part in solving school health problems.
5.4 Challenges
The Initiative faced the following challenges; (Robertson. ,2008).
• Schools were taking part in similar interventions or initiatives and frequent turnover of the health-promoting schools’ teams necessitated re-training with a limited budget. To counter these challenges, the schools were encouraged to integrate all the elements and actions of the Health-Promoting Schools Initiative into their working plans as core components. In the growth phase of the initiative, the National Health-Promoting Schools Task Force came up with the twinning approach to assist schools in proper utilization of resources.
5.5 Lessons learnt Schools are an important environment for understanding health promotion interventions. This initiative has shown to be effective in promoting a healthy working and living environment, integrating health promotion in the daily activities of the setting and working together with the community. (Robertson. ,2008).
The following are some of the lessons