Safety and Health region Gelderland-Midden is the local municipal health services. The municipal health services monitors, protects and promotes health of residents of fifteen municipalities, including Ede (where Pallas Athene College is located). The public health sector consists of three departments; youth health care, social care and regional ambulance provision.
The Youth Health Care is committed to detecting problems as quickly as possible by children from 0 to 18 years. This can be in the field of health or development of the child. If there are problems, Youth Health Care (JGZ in Dutch) guides the child, the parents or caregivers and possibly the teacher from school. If necessary, it is referred to another emergency service.
Children from 0 to 4 years old are examined at the consultation office. Children between 4 and 18 years old are seen at school by youth health care staff. The Youth health care does this for all children at different, arranged moments. In these studies attention is paid to physical growth and development, but also to aspects such as oral health, care and hygiene, education, leisure, sexuality, safety and the use of stimulants.
The Youth health care works together with all schools. This happens in consultation with the parents or caregivers and the children themselves. If necessary, the Youth health care also works together with agencies such as Youth Protection, Social Work, mental health care, general practitioners and specialists.
This is legally established in the Netherlands. Youth health care must strive to protect and promote the health and physical, mental and social development of children and young people from 0 to 18 years.
Schools for Health
Schools for Health is a Dutch notional program that focuses on primary schools, secondary schools and vocational schools. A healthy lifestyle engrained in the DNA of every school in the Netherlands is the mission of this School for Health program. The program combines ‘education’ and ‘health’. This leads to greater health gains, fewer health disparities, and improved educational performance. The School For Health program is funded by the Dutch government and around forty national organizations are cooperating to promote a healthy lifestyle at school, such as Trimbos institute, heart and lung foundation and nutrition center.
The program uses the School For Health approach to encourage schools to take action, by working on healthy lifestyles at school. This means that schools can tackle one or more health themes in an integrated way. The different themes were secondary schools can focus on are;
* nutrition
* exercise and sport
* well-being
* preventing smoking, alcohol use and drug use
* relationships and sexuality
* hygiene, skin and teeth
* indoor environment, natural environment and physical safety
* physical safety; such as traffic safety, healing loss
* media literacy
Schools that excel in one or more of these themes can apply for School For Health certificates for a number of these themes.
The School for Health approach is based on four pillars – education, environment, signaling, and policy. An integrated approach involves working on these four pillars, in the context of a single theme. This allows schools to show they are structurally working on health and meet de quality criteria.
Already 1300 schools are healthy schools in the Netherlands.
As municipal health service we think this international project is a very good initiative. This project allows schools from different countries and cultures to learn from each other in the field of healthy lifestyles. It is important that schools are concerned with a healthy lifestyle for their students. It has been found that healthy students achieve better results and the learning achievements go up. This project contributes to a healthy future generation.