School of Health Education. Current situation in the ACBC and future project in Europe

One of the functions that the World Health Organization (WHO) has been developing for a long time is the promotion of child health at school. In 1986, a report published by OME and UNICEF (Helping a billion children to learn about health) summarized the results of an international consultation on health learning.

When programming health education in school, among the concepts of health, we must take into account that health should be living in an increasingly autonomous, supportive and sweet way.

This vision leads us to the conclusion that health is not at all an exclusive duty of scientists and doctors, but that it is not a mere scientific problem, not just a mere absence of disease. In the defense and promotion of health must participate all kinds of technicians who provide their specific knowledge, but above all health is individual and community responsibility. The first responsible for health is self and when our knowledge is too scarce to solve personal problems, only then should we turn to the technicians.

There is a relationship between health, school outcomes, quality of life and economic productivity. By providing a good state of health, knowledge oriented towards achievement, values, competences and habits, the necessary channels will be opened to provide children with a healthy life and to lead the health changes that occur in the community.

Recent studies have demonstrated and confirmed the close relationship between health, school attendance and outcomes.

In the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, thanks to the School Health Act, the School Health in Public Schools, Ikastolas and Private Schools program has been launched for the first time (Law 7/1982, of 30 June).

"The Government intends to carry out its actions from a comprehensive health point of view. Therefore, schoolchildren are one of the largest parts of the population.

The School Health Act aims to be an effective tool to act in favor of health, given its greatest extent, and in it health research is essential, without forgetting, in any case, those related to psychotherapy or health education.

The measures provided for in this law are as follows:

1. Regular health research of school students, teachers and non-teaching staff.
2. Recognize and pay attention to behavior contrary to school students.
3. Health education programs.
4. Food and food safety pathways in school canteens.
5. Prevention actions against diseases that can be spread in schools.
6. Maintain and improve the health and health situation of the center and facilities."

The School Health teams were formed that same year in the three territories, and in those municipalities where the teams did not arrive, doctors and nurses were also assisted to carry out all this work.

The wishes of the Department of Health are clear. In the foreword of the book of Education for Health, published by the editorial service of the Basque Government in 1988, the Minister of Health of the time, José Manuel Freire Campo, talks about the collaboration and respect necessary so that this document can be considered as a basic aid in the daily educational task and achieve the goal of health for all ages, but especially for the school age in which this program is being developed.

The third point of the functions mentioned in the Law, that is, the Health Education Programs, have evolved and disappeared over the years. Unfortunately, in our environment, the reality of health education at school is far from ideal. As an exception there are sub-programs such as AIDS. But in general, in the objectives and tasks of school health programs, health education has very little space in school; these programs aim to prevent certain health problems and are developed only by groups of health professionals. Thus, professionals such as the family and education participate very little in the design and practice of the program.

These programs appear less and less when talking about School Health. The causes of its disappearance can be three: the first, the passage to health centers of some of the competences that appeared in the School Health Act; the second, the progressive disappearance of the teams that prepared for this program; and the third, because it has not yet been clarified what are or should be the competences of the Department of Education and the Department of Health in the programming of health education.

These setbacks in health education have also been noted in other countries. Therefore, in November 1991, WHO, UNICEF and UNESCO conducted a joint consultation to define the contents of comprehensive education for health in the school environment and the measures that countries should adopt to implement it.

From the current point of view of WHO, school health programs are a decisive tool in the implementation of health for all. The aim is to mobilize and strengthen the global and local, national and global health education and promotion initiatives proposed by WHO in 1995.

The aim is to bring together the programmes and actions of WHO and other organizations, such as the UN, and to launch health schools.

According to this initiative, a healthy school should offer:

• A healthy environment with enough space, adequate working conditions and a positive psychosocial climate.
• Complementary health education actions, emphasizing existing demands on health problems.
• School health services that respond to priority health problems, for their care, minimization and prevention.
• Extra-institutional projects for improving health in schools and the media.
• Nutrition and food programs to help people get, know, and prepare healthy foods.
• Sports, physical and leisure activities aimed at individual and collective human development.
• Counseling and social assistance services for students, their families and school staff.
• Health promotion actions aimed at school personnel.

This initiative will aim to develop a network of health schools such as the European one, and in our case the Spanish State will identify care centers and choose a significant number of schools to participate in this experience.

It would be desirable that in this experience there be at least one school in each country of the Basque Autonomous Community. Once the experience is completed and evaluated, for its integration into as many schools as possible in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.