Excerpt from Health-promoting schools: a resource for developing indicators, (2006) Schools for Health Europe, Amsterdam
Bengt Sundbaum & Jörgen Svedbom Assessment of the national health-promoting schools situation in Sweden pp 152-158
The Swedish National Agency for School Improvement is responsible for ENHPS membership in Sweden. The health-promoting schools approach is closely linked to the educational dimension of health-promoting schools and is labelled health-promoting improvement of schools. The important perspectives are the participatory perspective, the gender perspective, the health perspective, the cross-curricular perspective and the whole-school approach. This report is based on a task the Government of Sweden delegated to the Swedish National Institute of Public Health to disseminate effective methods of
strengthening school-based prevention of alcohol and drug misuse. The indicators for health-promoting schools are linked to Sweden’s compulsory school curriculum to emphasize that a health-promoting perspective is an obvious part of the responsibility of school. The indicators selected are:
• educational measures to create a safe and encouraging classroom environment;
• cooperation and dialogue with parents;
• student health services in close cooperation with the school staff;
• meaningful and organized leisure activities; and
• active work against bullying and truancy.
Main findings. A national pre-survey indicates that teachers and principals are very interested in effective methods of preventing disease and promoting health. Today about half the schools seem to have measures aiming at improving their psychosocial environment. Further, about half the responding schools answered that they had some form of programme for parents aiming at preventing alcohol and drug misuse among children. Schools in the pilot municipalities have shown great
interest in introducing new methods in disease-preventive and health-promoting school-based work, and many teachers have registered for training courses.