Didier

On 16 February 2023 the UNESCO Chair and WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Health & Education and the University of Puerto Rico will organise the webinar: Assessment, critical analysis and opportunities to strengthen research in School Health Promotion for children and adolescents in Latin America. The webinar will be held in Spanish. 

School Health Promotion and child and adolescent health should be high priorities for public health today. Research is an essential component in the development of policies, strategies, and programmes for School Health Promotion. Research is essential in the production of knowledge and the evaluation of practices. Developing a regional culture of research in School Health Promotion is a demand from various professional, institutional and academic sectors. Generating a research agenda in the field of School Health Promotion is a challenge that needs to be addressed.

The questions that will be addressed during this webinar are:

1. What is the current status of research on School Health Promotion and research on children and adolescents in Latin America?
2. What issues or research topics on School Health Promotion in general and on children and adolescents require priority attention?
3. What actions and strategies are required to articulate a research agenda in School Health Promotion and research on children and adolescents in Latin America?

The speakers are:

• Dr. Alba Yaneth Rincón Méndez, Coordinator of the Social Outreach Area of WHO/PAHO Collaborating Centre PROINAPSA, Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS), Colombia.
• Dr. Lucas Agostinho Fernandes, School Health Programme, Ministry of Health, Department of Health Promotion, Secretariat of Primary Health Care, Brazil.
• Dr. Hiram V. Arroyo, Professor, Director, Department of Social Sciences, Director, World Health Organization (WHO/PAHO) Collaborating Centre for Training and Research in Health Promotion and Health Education, School of Biosocial Sciences and Graduate School of Public Health, Medical Sciences Campus, University of Puerto Rico.

The webinar will be held in Spanish and take place on 16 February 2023 at:

• 10:00 – 11:00 Puerto Rico
• 11:00 – 12:00 Brazil
• 9:00 – 10:00 Washington, DC
• 15:00 – 16:00 CET

Register here. Registration is free of charge. After registering, you will receive a link to access the webinar.

More information in Spanish.

Webinar series

This webinar is part of series of webinars “Towards a new agenda for School Health Promotion in Latin America and Spain”. The following webinars are planned:

Date	Topic off the webinar
17 November 2022	Towards a regional agenda for School Health Promotion in Latin America.
16 February 2023	Assessment, critical analysis and opportunities to strengthen research in School Health Promotion for children and adolescents in Latin America.
16 March 2023	The curricular experience in School Health Promotion.
11 May 2023	The Promotion and Education of Comprehensive Sexual Health in educational systems.
28 September 2023	The importance of inserting the gender perspective in educational systems and school curr

A one-day hybrid seminar for all school health stakeholders in the Pacific!

21 February 2023 from 10 AM to 3 PM AEDT
Face-to-face at Monash University, Clayton Campus, Melbourne & online on Zoom

Please join us as we consider the future of school health promotion in the Pacific region.  This seminar is the first in a series of dialogues that aim to bring together key stakeholders from across the region and provide a platform for discussion and innovation in school health promotion. The major aim of this first seminar is for us to consider how schools can best contribute to the health and wellbeing of students, teachers, and the broader school community moving forward. The seminar will adopt a futures based approach to consider what  school health promotion might be in 2050.

The seminar’s objectives are to:

1. Share current approaches to school health promotion in the South Pacific region;
2. Discuss what we imagine school health promotion to look and feel like in 2050;
3. Identify current key enablers and barriers to school health promotion in our local contexts;
4. Identify key priorities and actions for strengthening school health promotion in the short and medium term; and
5. Provide an opportunity for networking among key stakeholders involved in school health promotion in the South Pacific.

This seminar will be of interest to teachers, teacher educators, health promotion professionals, school nurses and other school health workers, health organisations, policy and curriculum workers, professional associations and academics

Contact : deana.leahy@monash.edu & didier.jourdan@uca.fr

The online Symposium The Right to Science and Africa will be organised on Thursday 26 January from 14:00 to 17:30 pm CET. It is organised by the Cambridge-Harvard Right to Science Study Group at gloknos, led by Christine Mitchell (Harvard), Sebastian Porsdam Mann (Oxford), and Helle Porsdam (UNESCO Chair of Cultural Rights, University of Copenhagen), in collaboration with the Inclusion, Rights and Intercultural Dialogue Section of UNESCO’s Social and Human Sciences Sector.

Drawing on its 2017 Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers, UNESCO promotes a holistic vision of science anchored in human rights.

The COVID-19 experience has shown the need for a stronger application of the right to science in the face of modern-day challenges. At the same time, it put the spotlight on critical gaps in this respect. References to the right in the design of responses remained throughout the pandemic inconsistent and sporadic.

Taking a closer look at the right to science and Africa could not be timelier. Science, technology and innovation are the heart of the continent’s vision for a better future as captured by Agenda 2063. And it is even more important to consider the role of the right to science in transforming this aspiration to reality when we celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 30^th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. The presentations and the ensuing conversation will bring to the fore developments, challenges and recommendations for future action.

To attend, please register here: Meeting Registration – Zoom You will then receive the event’s Zoom link.

The year 2023 marks the mid-point since the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for people, planet and prosperity, with a set of 17 interlocked goals that will come up for review at the SDG Summit in September on the theme of investing in people.

Education must be prioritized to accelerate progress towards all the SDGs against the backdrop of a global recession, growing inequalities and the climate crisis. Building on the global momentum generated by the UN Transforming Education Summit (TES) in September 2022, today, the International Day of Education (IDE) will call for maintaining strong political mobilization around education and chart the way to translate commitments and global initiatives into action.

Please see the message from Director-General of UNESCO here.

You are invited to follow the full programme of the celebration or one or more of the following sessions:

• 16:30 – 17:15 CET) – Spotlight session: The right to education for Afghan girls and women (watch live)
• 17:15 – 18:45 CET – Interactive Panel discussion (watch live)

More information:

Programme International Day of Education

Background document International Day of Education

European public health and consumer organisations[1] wrote a letter on December 19^th, 2022 to Frans Timmermans (Executive Vice President for the European Green Deal), and EC Commissioners Kyriakides (DG Health) and Wojciechowski (DG Agri) to express their concern about the revision of EU consumer information regulation.

They highlight their concerns regarding a potential delay for this important legislation and regret that the debate around front-of-pack nutritional labelling is becoming increasingly polarised and less grounded in scientific evidence or public health concerns

They recall the key criteria for the future EU nutrition logo to meet consumers’ needs and guide them towards healthier choices, namely it should:

• be mandatory;
• be based on sound scientific evidence from independent research;
• provide simplified nutrition information using interpretive colour-codes;
• be based on uniform references amounts (100g or 100ml);
• allow comparison of products according to their amounts of critical nutrients (saturated fat, sugars and salt);
• be seen as a complementary tool to consumer education and dietary recommendations.

Wherever possible, it should be tested in real-life supermarket conditions, and especially for consumers from lower socio-economic groups, who are most at risk of overweight and obesity.

The signatories of the letter highlight that there is a significant body of independent scientific evidence to show that interpretative colour-codes are most effective in helping consumers to understand and easily compare the nutritional value of food products, especially for consumers from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

All these criteria are combined in the Nutri-Score, a color-coded interpretative front-of-pack nutrition label.

Download the letter here

Read the Nutri-Score blog

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[1] The European Heart Network “EHN”, the European Public Health Alliance “EPHA”) and consumers associations (the European Bureau of Consumer Unions “BEUC”). EPHA brings together 89 public health organizations in 21 European countries; EHN, 28 national associations and foundations dedicated to cardiovascular diseases; and BEUC, 46 independent consumer associations.

In 2014 the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model (WSCC) – a collaboration between the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and ASCD – was launched. It was a response to the “call for greater alignment, integration, and collaboration between education and health to improve each child’s cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development.” (ASCD, 2014, p. 6).

In the following years the model has become the preeminent school health framework in the U.S. and is used by the vast majority of states, districts, and schools. And while the use and expansion of this model has grown over the years there was still something missing.

School’s culture

A school’s culture – resulting from the school’s climate, the actions, interactions of everyone in that environment – plays a very large role in the success or failure of any new initiative. Culture is influenced by everyone inside the school but if there is one role or one group that has a huge influence it’s the principal, the school leader.

By focusing attention towards the school leader we prepare them with the skills and mindsets to implement change and to enhance their influence across the school community. We engage these key drivers of change in the process of change, and help ensure that the policies, processes, and practices across the school align, blend, and compliment.

A focus on the transformative skills of our school leaders is necessary and when adjusting or building a whole school initiative, the role of this type of leader is imperative.

Read more: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whole-school-community-child-culture-sean-slade/

The world’s 1.2 billion adolescents (young people aged 10-19 years) now represent almost 16% of the world’s population; yet this group has received limited attention from global agenda-setting initiatives, such as universal health coverage and sustainable development. This needs to be addressed, given that adolescence represents a critical period of the life course during which many factors contributing to lifelong well-being are set.

The BMJ, in collaboration with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH), launched the first tranche of a special collection on adolescent well-being, arguing for greater priority to be placed on the needs and well-being of adolescents globally. This BMJ collection examines how the domains of adolescent well-being impact on future outcomes, and how these can be supported and promoted by evidence-based policymaking and programming. Within the collection, the argument is put forward that the world’s adolescents cannot be supported to reach their full potential without addressing the multidimensional nature of well-being in this group, and by working across sectors such as health and education.

Read the full collection here:
https://www.bmj.com/adolescent-wellbeing

Breaking down silos between health and education to improve adolescent well-being

In the article “Breaking down silos between health and education to improve adolescent well-being” Nicola Gray (co-Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair Global Health & Education) and colleagues examine the mutual reinforcement of adolescent health and education, the challenges of intersectoral working, and the joint investment needed to secure well-being during adolescence, into adult life, and for the next generation.