Healthy Schools Framework in Saudi Arabia: A Narrative Review

Abstract

The Healthy School (or Health-Promoting School as a term used by WHO and other countries) is a whole-school approach to promoting health in a school setting. Healthy Schools and Health-Promoting Schools frameworks extend around the globe are important strategies that provide opportunities to improve the health of children and adolescents and to tackle health inequalities in the population. Two decades since the Healthy Schools framework was advocated in Saudi Arabia. This paper sets out to review relevant literature and reports related to Healthy Schools in Saudi Arabia. Very few studies have been conducted to assess the Health Schools framework. The findings showed that there is a gap between the ideal concepts of the Healthy Schools framework and current implementation. Promoting healthy diet and physical activity as a starting point for wider implementation. Providing financial resources and ongoing capacity-building opportunities for the teachers and associated school staff. Collaboration between the health and education sectors is required to provide a prolonged framework for monitoring and evaluating the healthy schools outcomes.

Nursing students’ awareness of health-promoting lifestyle profile and sustainable development goals – a quasi-experimental study

“…Contrary to common belief that young people have unhealthy habits despite awareness of healthy lifestyle's effect on their health, only small number of our study sample used tobacco (20%) or consumed alcohol (20.3%). 27 Experiencing higher levels of stress by nursing students compared to students in other health science could consist of a part of the reason for unhealthy behaviours like smoke or consuming alcohol. 28 The awareness of sustainable development was higher among female students in the present study, which is consisted with the results of a recent study.…”

“…Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II (HPLP II) This scale was used to assess students' health-promoting lifestyle behaviours. The scale has 52 items and 6 subdimensions including health responsibility (3,9,15,21,27,33,39,45,51), physical activity (4, 10,16,22,28,34,40,46), nutrition (2,8,14,20,26,32,38,44,50), spiritual growth (6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 52), interpersonal relations (1, 7, 13, 19, 25, 31, 37, 43, 49), and stress management (5,11,17,23,29,35,41,47). Each item is coded from 1 (Never) to 4 (Regularly).…”

“…Cronbach Alpha coefficient was 0.81 in the original study, we calculated it as 0.89 in this study. 13 Sustainable Development Awareness Scale (SDA) SDA was developed by Atmaca et al This 5-point Likert-type scale consists of 37 items and 3 dimensions including economy (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13), society (14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22), and environment (23,24,25,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37). Each item is scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) except 1, 8, 10, 24, 31 and 35 items that are reverse coded.…”