School health promotion - Good effort, but could do better; keep up the good work!

Abstract

There are many reasons to focus on schools as a setting to promote the health of young people, including the inter-relationship between health and education, the commitment to health and synergy between the health and education sectors, the existence of evidence to support school health promotion, and the access to large numbers of students that schools provide. There remain, however, many challenges for school health promotion, including the potential to overcrowd the curriculum, the difficulty of engaging parents and community partners, issues of school or health ownership of programs and the practical dilemmas of evaluation. It is argued that rather than being reasons to avoid work in this setting, these challenges should inform intervention and broader program design.