The International School Health Network is pleased to announce that we are starting a web-based Document Sharing program that will share selected in school-based health promotion, social development, safety/crime prevention and other topics. We will be using the DocStoc document sharing program to host these documents, thereby enabling us to create a network of interested agencies and professionals who are willing to contribute to as well as benefit from this new form of professional networking. The documents that we are identifying in this program are based on these criteria: The documents are substantive and long-lasting in nature, The publishers or the authors of the documents have agreed to their posting in this program. The documents will be sometimes collected on a project-driven or event related basis, so that we can provide collections of documents in curent topics

How to Use this Wiki-based Web Site Add a profile of your own SH work in this wiki and you will be able to control the amount of email (from other members and about page changes) that you receive from this wiki. Learn how from our video/web tour on joining and creating a profile. (Or, read these detailed instructions on how to manage your wetpaint account or profile). Learn how to "watch" and "unwatch" pages in this wiki by viewing this brief video. (Or, read these detailed instructions on managing your account from Wetpaint Learn more about how to edit, add and move pages as well as make comments within this wiki in our video/web tour. (Or, read these detailed instructions on using "Easy Edit" to change the text on pages, or how to create, move or work with pages.)

As part of the introduction of this School Health Insider blog, we will initially keep this Document Sharing Program open to the public. However, eventually, we will be asking participants to either subscribe to this service through their national SH associations or directly through a small fee. We will also explore the possibility of participants contributing a specified number of documents into the program in lieu of paying the subscription fee.

How to access the Shared Document Program

As long as we keep the ISHN Document Sharing Program site public (The platform provides an option between public and private documents), you simply need to go to www.docstoc.com, sign in as SHInsider (password is SH_Insider) and begin browsing or adding to the bookmarks. Once we make the document sharing program private, you will need to this blog. (We will provide a method to join at that time.) We will also be creating a listing of documents found on Docstoc and Google Docs on this web site.

How to Upload a Presentation into the ISHN Shared Collection of Bookmarks

Go to www.docstoc.com and click on the login button. The User Name is "SHInsider", the current password is "SH_Insider". When you are logged in as School Health Insider, you can upload other documents by clicking on "Upload, selecting public or private as the publishing option and posting the document in the correct file folder.

(PS You can create your own Docstoc account but unless we all use the same tag words, we run the risk of losing them in the vast number of documents that will eventually be published on the Delicious database. By entering them in the ISHN world-wide, accessible program on school health and social development programs, we will all be able to find them easily. If you contribute to the collection, you will always have access to all of them. For example, you can copy the ones most relevant to your organization and post them on your own web site.

PS. There is also a way to "embed" the documents into pages on your web site or blog. this makes them clickable and easy to find for the visitors to your web site

How we will Catalogue and Organize the Bookmarks

The Docstoc platform uses "tags" to catalogue the documents that have been uploaded. Consequently, we have developed a list of "Tags & Topics" that we use in a variety of other projects. Please use these tags to describe the documents that you upload into the ISHN Document Sharing Program.

Note: When we have accumulated enough documents, we will publish and update them periodically them on a page in this web site as a way of presenting links to all of the documents in a more structured way.


When you upload a document into the the Docstoc platform, it will ask you to "tag" it using key words.Please use the list of underlined key words found below to tag your documents. If you have a topic not covered in this list, please send that addition to dmccall@internationalschoolhealth.org

Note: Also please note that you need to use "Underscore" in any tag that has more than one word. (eg School_Health) This is because the docstoc platform separates any combination of words and treats them as separate topics (ie "school" and "health". Yhis makes it more difficult to find school health related documents.

Note: When you upload a document, please also identify the nature of the organization that has published the document. We use these types of organizations in our list of tags; government, non-governmental-organization, research-organization, international-agency, international-organization, program-publisher, research-journal other)


A. Comprehensive, Community/Agency-School and Whole School Strategies
1. Settings-based approaches to health, learning, human development
2. Health Promoting Schools (Health) (See also Coordinated School Health Programs, Comprehensive School Health as well as issue specific terms such as Active Schools, Nutrition Friendly Schools, Tobacco Free Schools, Drug-Free Schools)
3. Safe Schools (Crime Prevention) (See also Safe & Caring Schools, Peaceful Schools)
4. Child Friendly Schools (Human Rights, Youth Development)
5. Community Schools (Welfare) See also Full Service Schools, Cities in Schools, Wrap around Schools
6. School Health & Nutrition (See also Development Programs)
7. Effective Schools (Education) See also Open Schools
8. Eco-schools (Environment)
9. Aboriginal Schools (See Local Community Context)
10. Disrupted Schools (See Local Community Context)
11. Inclusive Schools

B. Health and Social Problems

(Related to Physical Health)
1. General Health/Growth & Development/Child Development/ Puberty
2. Infectious Disease/ Personal Hygiene / Handwashing/ Pandemics/Epidemics
3. First Aid
4. Home Economics/Family Studies
5. Child Abuse-Child Neglect/Sexual Abuse of Children / Family Violence
6. Vision, Hearing, Genetic Defects
7. Parasites See also worms, head lice, etc
8. Diabetes
9. Oral/Dental Health
10. Natural Disasters, Emergency Preparedness

(Related to behaviours)
11. Physical Activity/Sports/Active Living-Recreation
12. Healthy Eating/Nutrition/Obesity/Eating Disorders/Food Security/Food Safety/ Body Image
13. Injury Prevention/
14. Substance Abuse/Addictions/ Alcohol/ Drugs/ Gambling/ Medications/ Inhalants
15. Mental Health/ Mental Illness/ Suicide/ School Psychologists/ Role of MH workers working with schools
16. Sexual Health/ HIV-AIDS/ Sexually Transmitted Infections/ Reproductive Health
17. Tobacco Use
18. Bullying/ Violence/ Delinquency & Crime/ Students with Behaviour Disorders-ADHD/ Security/ Role of police working with schools
19. Social Development-Responsibility/Civics/ Service Learning/ Relationships/ Social-Emotional Learning/
20. Gender Equity
21. Racism / Multicultural Awareness / Diversity/ Human Rights
22. Internet Safety

(Related to Personal Development)
23. Personal Development/ Ethics/Character/ Decision-making/ Critical Thinking Skills/ Spirituality/ Religious Beliefs
24. Self-Knowledge/ Self-esteem
25. Life Planning/ Career Planning/ Work-Life Balance

(Related to environmental sustainability)
26. Environmental Health/ Allergies/ Asthma/ Lung Health/ Air Quality
27. Environmental Hazards &Health - Sun Safety/ Pesticides, Pollution
28. Environmental Citizenship/Stewardship/

C Populations-Groups
1. Early Childhood/Young Children
2. Children
3. Tweens / Pre-adolescents
4. Youth / Adolescents
5. Young Adults
6. Students with physical and intellectual disabilities/Inclusive Schools
7. FASD Children
8. Ethno-cultural minority students
9. Aboriginal/Indigenous
10. Females
11. Males

D Elements/Components of CSH
1. Comprehensive
- clusters of conditions, behaviours, problems
- synergistic combinations of programs
- multi-level approaches (school-agency-government)
2. Coordination & Systems Change
- role of PHN working with schools, (School Nursing)
- role of SH Coordinators
- implantation/diffusion/systems change/sustainability
3. School Health Policies
- school boards
- other agencies
4. Health Literacy/ Health Education/ Health Careers/ Health & Society
- teaching methods/teacher development/pre-service training
- curriculum design
- media literacy/new media/web as social environment
5. Health & Other Services/ School Clinics/ Links with Community Clinics
- early identification/screening-referrals
- immunization
- after school programs
- youth friendly services
- role, training of health care workers, physicians, clinics
- nutrition services
- day care/pre-school services
- youth employment services
-

6. Social Environment & Support
- school climate/ethos
- youth engagement
- parent involvement
- working with community groups and volunteers
- working with media
-
7. Physical Environment
- school facilities
- transportation to school/ school buses
- school design/ school maintenance
- outdoor environment/ school grounds/ playgrounds
- clean water, lighting, equipment

E. Different Local Community Contexts
1. Low income/disadvantaged communities
- head start continuation programs
- school meal & snack programs
- pre-school/day care programs
- toy lending libraries
- parent resources centres/ parenting training programs
- school dropout prevention/ basic literacy/ alternative schools
- coordination with housing programs
2. Aboriginal Communities & Students
3. Rural communities
4. Inner city, multi-ethnic communities
5. Religious Communities

F. School Health Promotion Theory/Effectiveness

1. Understanding context
   - systems theory
   - systems and organizational characteristics
   - self-assessment tools
   - strategic and situational planning
   
   
2. Seeking Congruence with education mandate of school
   - connection between health and educational achievement/school effectiveness
   
   
3. Selecting and implementing evidence-based programs
   - diffusion of innovations
   -
4. Coordinating programs
   - role of change agent/ SH Coordinator/ SH Committees
   
   
5. Building Capacity/ Continuous Improvement
   
   - Types of Capacity (coordinated policy, assigned coordinators, mechanisms for cooperation/collaboration, indicators/monitoring/reporting, issue management, work force development/staff development, plan for sustainability, knowledge translation & exchange
   

- Capacity at different levels (Government/system, Agency/School Board/Authority, School/Neighbourhood, Community, Professional Competencies, Inter-professional Education/Training)

6. Addressing Characteristics of Systems, Organizations, Professions
   
   - Openess (Boundaries, interactions between system & environment, constant flux, micro-politics of school etc).
   
   - Loosely-coupled (Management control & decision-making, role of senior leaders, role of middle managers, role of front-line staff, adopter concerns etc)
   
   - Professional Bureaucracies (multi-level systems, influence of structures, influence of knowledge and expertise, internal communications, informal networks, non-rational decision-making, routinization, readiness for innovation or reform, professional norms, sociology and ideology of professions, organizational culture, policy levers etc)
   
   - Working across multiple systems (degree of cooperation from communications to merger, cooperation at different levels ministry, agency, school, interprofessional)
   
   
7. Behaviour Theories
   - Soclal Learning and Social Reasoning
   - Social/emotional Intelligence
   - Stages of Change/Transtheoretical
   - Cognitive Behavioural
   - Attachment Theory
   - Resilience
   - etc
   

G. School Health Research
(Broad questions derived from ecological, systems-based approaches)

1. What is the connection between health status/behaviours, social development and learning/educational achievement? (Connection between health & learning)
2. What is the impact of the physical and social environment of the school setting and how does it interact with the family and community settings?
3. How do different country contexts affect the development, implementation and outputs/outcomes of school health programs? (Low income countries, middle income countries, high income countries)
   
4. What is the effectiveness of specific SH programs/interventions (eg education or peer program or health service or policy) on overall health? Note: The research on the effect of SH programs on specific health/social problems is covered above within the topics section.
5. What is the effect of improving different elements/components of a coordinated programs to healthy promoting schools in areas such as policies, health education, health services, physical environment and social environment?
6. What is the effect of using comprehensive approaches to create whole school or health promoting schools? Are they more effective than single interventions? Is there a difference between "whole schools" and "community, agency and school programs?
7. How can such multiple coordinated programs/services be coordinated effectively?
8. How can comprehensive and coordinated school health programs be sustained?
9. What is the cost-effectiveness of various SH programs and what is their cost-benefit?
10. Which research methods are most appropriate for different aspects of SH promotion?