Health Education holds the "Health Promoting Schools" programme

The workshop was organised within the Health Promoting Schools programme at Sharjah Education Academy (SEA), where the workshop targeted the team of evaluators responsible for evaluating schools within the programme.

The workshop, presented by Dr. Samar Al Faqih, Regional Advisor for Health Promotion and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organisation, discussed building evaluators’ technical capacities regarding qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods, reviewing evaluation requirements, including the necessary documents and observation tools, practical training on personal interviews and group discussions, and improving the quality of final reports for the evaluation process.

Her Excellency Iman Rashid Saif, Director of the Health Education Department at SCFA, expressed that the Department is the first institution in the UAE to launch the "Health Promoting Schools" programme in accordance with the standards and conditions stipulated by the World Health Organisation. As it discusses the topic of nutrition as a major factor in preventing chronic diseases and targets children and adolescents.

Her Excellency also extended her sincere thanks and gratitude to the partners of this programme, headed by the World Health Organisation, the Ministry of Education,  Sharjah Private Education Authority (SPEA), the Ministry of Health and Community Protection, Sharjah Municipality, Sharjah Prevention and Safety Authority (SPSA), and Sharjah Roads and Transport Authority (SRTA).

Her Excellency Iman Rashid Saif pointed out that community partnerships were the basis for the success of the first cycle of the programme, which the administration seeks to enable a greater number of schools to establish a supportive environment for health. She added that 34 government and private schools were honoured in the first cycle, and their classification was distributed according to their application of the approved standards of the programme, as 16 schools that met 90% of the standards received the gold category rating, 12 schools that received the silver category rating met 80% of the standards, and finally 4 schools met the bronze category.