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Welcome to this international wiki on the effectiveness of comprehensive approaches, coordinated programs and whole school or community-school strategies to promoting health and human development. This wiki has been established to encourage a sharing of the knowledge about comprehensive school health approaches, coordinated school health programs, health promoting, child-friendly schools, school health/nutrition and other programs for low income countries, and similar strategies such as effective schools, safe schools, community schools, open schools and eco-schools. All of these strategies strive to have all facets of the school support the development of the whole child.
The focus of this web site is not on developing yet another model or framework describing what needs to be done through schools on these issues, nor in combining these various concepts that seek to engage the whole school, promote coordinated programs and develop comprehensive approaches. There is an abundance of such models.
Instead, this wiki-based dialogue will focus on the strategies, techniques and lessons learned about how to develop, implement, strengthen and sustain these school-based and school-linked models and frameworks. We have identified ten key points or essential learning gleaned from the evidence, experience and good examples of these school-based health, crime prevention and social development models and approaches.
This wiki is also linked to other wikis that are part of related Canadian and international projects. These include a wiki on School Substance Abuse Prevention and another on School Health Indicators. More of these wikis and other web-based collaboration tools are being developed by other organizations and links to them will be posted here as they become available. The Canadian Association for School Health is committed to these new forms of collaboration and have initiated several "tool-box" wikis that list resources instead of presenting research evidence as is done here.
The content of this wiki has been drawn from all of these recognized strategies relating to the social role of the school in promoting human development. While we have used a framework that has identified ten key points that are common to these whole school-community strategies, we are not trying to develop an over-arching model. Each school, each community, each country needs to develop its own comprehensive approach, to coordinate the programs that it has selected and create its own school-based and school-linked strategies to respond to the health, education, social development, equity and environmental challenges faced by its children and families.
This wiki is being developed by a consultative process that has begun in Canada and is now extended to other countries around the world. In this first phase, we invite visotors to this wide open wiki to comment on the overall approach, the structure, listing and organization of the topics as well as to suggest good sources of content or experts/practitioners who could be asked to develop and maintain pages within this wiki.
In this phase, anyone who comes visit this wiki can contribute content. The easiest way to to that is to add a new or respond to an existing "thread" of commentary found at the bottom of each page. Or, you can click on the "easy edit" button at the top of each page to add a brief description of relevant research, reports or people who could be contacted to maintain this page, including yourself. If you want to create a new topic within the wiki, you can add a page using the "Add Page" button in the left hand margin. There are other tools available on this wiki platform but we ask that you refrain from those more elaborate technology functions until this first phase is complete.
Be sure to let us know that you are interested in being a contributor to this wiki by either Joining the Wiki (found in the top navigation bar) or by simply emailing dmccall@cash-aces.ca We have invited experts, practitioners, administrators, government officials and policy-makers to comment on and add to the content of these pages. Please feel free to add content.
Also, please read our Introduction, that includes more information About this Wiki, a One Page Summary, Ten Key Points, Definition of Terms and wiki Discussion Guidelines before adding your comments to the other pages. Also, please read our Table of Contents.
In the second phase of the development of this wiki, we will be asking practitioners, graduate students, researchers and officials to prepare summaries of 2-3 pages and to post them as "pages" within this wiki. These summaries will include a summary of the evidence, identify selected research references, create links to relevant national or international reports and list examples of programs, practices or studies that illustrate the content of the summary.
We will be contacting practitioners, experts, officials and others across Canada and around the world to join us in this wiki because we believe that this knowledge has no boundaries. Please note, however, that we are emphasizing the need to develop school programs differently in different contexts, so we will be seeking a wide diversity of people.
In this wiki discussion we have emphasized several emerging concepts, practices and questions in school-based health promotion, social development, safety and sustainable development. These emerging concepts include:
These emerging ideas should be considered of equal significance to more traditional strategies that seek to select and implement evidence-based programs in response to specific health, safety, environmental or social problems and then to coordinate those multiple programs in and across five areas such as policy, instruction, services, social environment and physical environment.
School-based and school-linked policies, programs and practices can have positive effects on educational achievement, school effectiveness, the health of children and youth, safety/security, social cohesion, child welfare, community and country economic development and the protection of the natural environments in which we live, learn, work and play. This wiki is devoted to sharing the knowledge to enhance our effectiveness in promoting schools for all of these social purposes. We seek to identify what works and what does not work through this dialogue.
The members of the International School Health Network are pleased to host this discussion. This wiki has been established by the Canadian Association for School Health with funding from the Community Initiatives Fund of Health Canada.
If you would like to become a Contributor to this wiki, contact dmccall@cash-aces.ca
The focus of this web site is not on developing yet another model or framework describing what needs to be done through schools on these issues, nor in combining these various concepts that seek to engage the whole school, promote coordinated programs and develop comprehensive approaches. There is an abundance of such models.
Instead, this wiki-based dialogue will focus on the strategies, techniques and lessons learned about how to develop, implement, strengthen and sustain these school-based and school-linked models and frameworks. We have identified ten key points or essential learning gleaned from the evidence, experience and good examples of these school-based health, crime prevention and social development models and approaches.
This wiki is also linked to other wikis that are part of related Canadian and international projects. These include a wiki on School Substance Abuse Prevention and another on School Health Indicators. More of these wikis and other web-based collaboration tools are being developed by other organizations and links to them will be posted here as they become available. The Canadian Association for School Health is committed to these new forms of collaboration and have initiated several "tool-box" wikis that list resources instead of presenting research evidence as is done here.
The content of this wiki has been drawn from all of these recognized strategies relating to the social role of the school in promoting human development. While we have used a framework that has identified ten key points that are common to these whole school-community strategies, we are not trying to develop an over-arching model. Each school, each community, each country needs to develop its own comprehensive approach, to coordinate the programs that it has selected and create its own school-based and school-linked strategies to respond to the health, education, social development, equity and environmental challenges faced by its children and families.
This wiki is being developed by a consultative process that has begun in Canada and is now extended to other countries around the world. In this first phase, we invite visotors to this wide open wiki to comment on the overall approach, the structure, listing and organization of the topics as well as to suggest good sources of content or experts/practitioners who could be asked to develop and maintain pages within this wiki.
In this phase, anyone who comes visit this wiki can contribute content. The easiest way to to that is to add a new or respond to an existing "thread" of commentary found at the bottom of each page. Or, you can click on the "easy edit" button at the top of each page to add a brief description of relevant research, reports or people who could be contacted to maintain this page, including yourself. If you want to create a new topic within the wiki, you can add a page using the "Add Page" button in the left hand margin. There are other tools available on this wiki platform but we ask that you refrain from those more elaborate technology functions until this first phase is complete.
Be sure to let us know that you are interested in being a contributor to this wiki by either Joining the Wiki (found in the top navigation bar) or by simply emailing dmccall@cash-aces.ca We have invited experts, practitioners, administrators, government officials and policy-makers to comment on and add to the content of these pages. Please feel free to add content.
Also, please read our Introduction, that includes more information About this Wiki, a One Page Summary, Ten Key Points, Definition of Terms and wiki Discussion Guidelines before adding your comments to the other pages. Also, please read our Table of Contents.
In the second phase of the development of this wiki, we will be asking practitioners, graduate students, researchers and officials to prepare summaries of 2-3 pages and to post them as "pages" within this wiki. These summaries will include a summary of the evidence, identify selected research references, create links to relevant national or international reports and list examples of programs, practices or studies that illustrate the content of the summary.
We will be contacting practitioners, experts, officials and others across Canada and around the world to join us in this wiki because we believe that this knowledge has no boundaries. Please note, however, that we are emphasizing the need to develop school programs differently in different contexts, so we will be seeking a wide diversity of people.
In this wiki discussion we have emphasized several emerging concepts, practices and questions in school-based health promotion, social development, safety and sustainable development. These emerging concepts include:
- truly understanding how SH programs work differently in different national and community contexts,
- how comprehensive multi-level, multi-issue approaches create synergy and efficiencies,
- how to truly recognize the constraints and work within the primary educative role of the school and
- how to build capacity in schools, other agencies, professionals and the community.
These emerging ideas should be considered of equal significance to more traditional strategies that seek to select and implement evidence-based programs in response to specific health, safety, environmental or social problems and then to coordinate those multiple programs in and across five areas such as policy, instruction, services, social environment and physical environment.
School-based and school-linked policies, programs and practices can have positive effects on educational achievement, school effectiveness, the health of children and youth, safety/security, social cohesion, child welfare, community and country economic development and the protection of the natural environments in which we live, learn, work and play. This wiki is devoted to sharing the knowledge to enhance our effectiveness in promoting schools for all of these social purposes. We seek to identify what works and what does not work through this dialogue.
The members of the International School Health Network are pleased to host this discussion. This wiki has been established by the Canadian Association for School Health with funding from the Community Initiatives Fund of Health Canada.
If you would like to become a Contributor to this wiki, contact dmccall@cash-aces.ca
