July 2002 Nutrition Project in China Produces Key ResultsA six-school nutrition pilot project in China offered to more than 8,000 school staff, students and their families has produced significant improvements in their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, promoting optimism that the approach could benefit schools throughout China and around the world. Carmen Aldinger of EDC's Health and Human Development (HHD) Programs recently returned from a final evaluation visit to the schools, where she and EDC's partners, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), analyzed evaluation surveys and observed the school programs in action. The schools are located in the cities of Hangzhou and Wenzhou in the Zhejiang Province in the southeastern region of China.
"Improvements were found in several key areas," said
Aldinger. "By the end of the project, more children were eating
breakfast, enjoying the school lunches, and practicing better hygienic
habits—drinking clean water and not eating expired foods."
Parents, for example, showed a dramatic increase in health knowledge.
Their scores on a health survey rose from 45% before the program
to 73% in the final survey. Significant improvement was also seen
in student attitudes about such topics as the importance of nutrition
and HIV education. Behavior improvements, such as the numbers of
students washing hands before eating, were marked, she said. Among
staff at the outset of the program, 24% of staff paid attention
to nutrition when planning meals; by the final survey 38% did so.
The program involved six schools and six others were chosen as controls. In the initial training in April 2000, Aldinger drew on the publication, Healthy Nutrition: An Essential Element of a Health-Promoting School in the WHO Information Series on School Health, jointly produced by EDC, FAO, and WHO. Aldinger, the main author, together with colleagues from WHO and FAO, offered assistance in planning and team development. "Schools, with fairly limited external guidance and assistance were able to plan and implement an impressive array of activities at different levels, involving students, teachers, the entire school, families and the communities," said Peter Glasauer, FAO nutrition officer, in his final report. The schools made changes in many areas throughout the school program, building, and environment. As the Principal from Si Ji Qing Elementary School in Hangzhou said, "The project was a challenge and an opportunity." Jack Jones, of WHO's Department of Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Health Promotion said that the project demonstrated the variety of opportunities schools have to improve health of students. He cited a number of examples:
For Aldinger and her partners, the next steps will be to find ways to help sustain these improvements; consider expanding into other areas such as early childhood education, skills-based health education, or surveillance; and spread the word of these successes to other schools in China and around the world. For more information, including the findings of a mid-term report in April 2001, read a news story from the HHD Web site.
http://main.edc.org/newsroom/features/china.asp ©2002 Education Development Center, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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To learn more about the inextricable link between health and learning, see EFA 2000 Assessment: Thematic Study on School Health and Nutrition, written by EDC authors.
Read about the factors that both contributed to and impeded the schools' progress.
Read a journal article from Health Promotion International about nutrition in China
Read articles from the HHD Web site about the most recent developments in this project:
Health-Promoting Schools Project in China Shows Changes in Schools and Families
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The
two-year program featured training, planning, and team-building
activities to help the schools build nutrition education and
services. WHO funded the project as part of its Health-Promoting
Schools
(HPS) initiative, which encourages
schools to promote the healthy development of students, school
personnel, families and surrounding communities with all means
at their disposal. Health and learning are inseparable, as many
studies have demonstrated, said Aldinger. For the China project,
nutrition education was a meaningful "entry point" into
the broader goal of building a health-promoting school. HHD conducted
this project in its role as a WHO Collaborating Center to Promote
Health through Schools and Communities.
