One of the core mandates of the Healthy Schools branch is to promote a comprehensive school health approach. Comprehensive school health is an internationally recognized framework for supporting improvements in students’ educational outcomes while addressing school health in a planned, integrated and holistic way.
Comprehensive school health includes children’s physical, social and emotional wellbeing. It is based on the recognition that health and learning are interdependent – and it goes well beyond what happens in the classroom.
“Comprehensive”, in this context, means addressing health in every aspect of the school environment, including:
- teaching and learning
- the school’s social and physical environment
- healthy school policy, and
- services and community partnerships.
Research has shown that taking this approach is the most effective way to support improvements in children’s health – and in their academic achievement.
For more information on comprehensive school health, visit the Joint Consortium for School Health (JCSH) website.
See also Supportive Environments for Learning: Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Within Comprehensive School Health, a special supplement to the Canadian Journal of Public Health.
|
