2024
| Report
Progress on drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools 2015 – 2023
The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme report, ‘Progress on drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools 2015 – 2023’ presents updated national, regional and global estimates for WASH in schools at the mid-point of the SDG period. This report has a special focus on menstrual health and examines the availability of national data corresponding to internationally recommended priority indicators on this topic.
| Special Update
School meals: A toolkit for parliamentarians
The International Parliamentary Network for Education (IPNEd), with the support of the World Food Programme and the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, produced ‘School meals: A toolkit for parliamentarians’. The toolkit provides members of parliament with the evidence to make the case for school meals along with actionable advice and guidance.
2023
| Report
State of School Feeding Worldwide, 2022
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) released its biannual flagship publication, providing an overview on how countries support their children through effective school feeding programmes. This report uses the best available data sources to provide an overview of coverage, implementation practices and costs of school-based health and nutrition programmes worldwide.
| Special Update
International School Meals Day: Launch of New Animated Video
Learning while hungry is nearly impossible. In honor of International School Meals Day, the Child Health Task Force developed a new animated video on the benefits of school feeding programs for children. School meals are one of the most effective non-teaching interventions to improve learning. They encourage children to attend school regularly and foster equitable opportunities to learn. Making these programs effective requires the support and input of many sectors, including education, health, and agriculture.
| Webinar
Ready to Learn and Thrive: Sharing the School Health and Nutrition Global Status Report
The Child Health Task Force, UNESCO, and LSHTM co-hosted a webinar to mark the publication of the report Ready to Learn and Thrive: School Health and Nutrition around the World. Listen to the recording and access the presentation slides here on the website.
| Webinar
School Health and Nutrition: Reach and Relevance for Adolescents
The Global Financing Facility (GFF) hosted a webinar to launch a suite of tools designed to guide program planners through some of the key questions that arise in program development and investment prioritization to support adolescents in achieving their full potential. The event engaged the World Bank Task Team Leaders, technical bodies, and external funding agencies to discuss how these tools can be widely applied in practice. Watch the recording here.
2022
| Press Release
World Mental Health Day
On World Mental Health Day, October 6th, 2022, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), gave a speech at the UN Transforming Education Summit emphasizing the role of schools in protecting the mental health of children. WHO and UNICEF also launched a briefing note for national governments on promoting and protecting mental health in schools and learning environments. Learn more about supporting children's mental health and wellbeing through schools in this infographic, part of the newly released microlearning toolkit on school health and nutrition.
| Report
Highlights from "Ready to learn and thrive: school health and nutrition around the world"
UNESCO, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Global Partnership for Education, UNICEF, World Bank, World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO), with the support of the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition and the UN Nutrition Secretariat released a brief presenting highlights from the new global school health and nutrition status report. The brief summarizes the report, Ready to learn and thrive: School health and nutrition around the world. Based on the most comprehensive and up to date data, the report provides an overview of the extent to which countries have school health and nutrition (SHN) policies and programmes in place. It aims to encourage efforts to improve, scale up and sustain SHN policies and programmes to improve overall well-being of learners and to provide a basis for monitoring progress. Stay tuned for the release of the full-length report in November, 2022.
| Webinar
Healthy & Educated – School Health and Nutrition to transform education and young people’s lives
Join this hybrid event as part of the June 28-30 UN Transforming Education Pre-Summit in Paris. The event will feature speakers from around the world, and will be attended by the multiple partners involved in efforts to make every school a health promoting school. It aims to explore the integrated approach to school health and nutrition and highlight its positive effects.
Sponsored by Finland, Namibia and the Global Partnership for Education, with the support of UNESCO, UNICEF and WFP, the event will be in English and French. Watch online here from 6:30-8:00 AM EDT on June 28 2022.
| Special Update
Why Policy Makers Should Prioritize School Health Programs
Check out this newly published brief distilling questions and responses from interviews with 16 USAID Africa Bureau Missions on operationalizing multi-sector coordination for school health. Read the full report here.
| Webinar
Multi-sectoral Approaches to Child Health: A discussion series
The Re-imagining the Package of Care for Children subgroup of the Child Health Task Force is hosting a discussion series on enablers and challenges to effective multi-sectoral approaches to child health programming. Register here to join! Recordings and presentation slides will be posted here.
| Special Update
School as a Platform to Control Malaria: The case for cross-sectoral investment
In honor of World Malaria Day, the Child Health Task Force in collaboration with USAID has released an infographic to highlight the importance of school-based malaria prevention and treatment. View the infographic here!
| Blog
Governments across Africa are rebuilding home-grown school feeding (HGSF) programs to help their recovery from the pandemic
The Brookings Institution published a blog on Africa Day of School Feeding which discusses the role of home-grown school feeding in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read the blog here.
| Webinar
How to Make Better Policies for School Meals
The OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate hosted a webinar focused on how to overcome evidence gaps in food systems to support policy makers around the world develop better policies for food systems. Watch the recording here.
| Journal Article
Eligibility for the use of ready-made spectacles among children in a school-based programme in Ghana
A cross-sectional study on a low-cost vision care intervention in public junior high schools in Bongo district, Ghana was published in PLOS Global Public Health. Read the full article here!
2021
| Webinar
Multisectoral Collaboration for Children
The Re-imagining the Package of Care for Children subgroup hosted a webinar on October 19 at 12pm EDT to share findings from interviews with USAID Africa Missions and other partners operationalizing school health and nutrition. Access the recording and presentation from the webinar here!
| Report
Operationalizing Health & Education Coordination
A new report has been published on the Child Health Task Force website sharing recommendations for operationalizing school health and nutrition that emerged from interviews with USAID Africa Missions. It answers the question: How do countries, practitioners, and development partners bridge the gap between knowing 'what to do' and 'how to do it' when it comes to school health? Read full report here!
| Blog
Getting School Health Right in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Think Global Health published a blog on the COVID-19 disruptions to children's and adolescent's learning and access to school health and nutrition services. The piece also discusses the importance of school health programming and investments beyond COVID-19, challenges in implementation, and critical actions for individuals and organizations to promote and advocate for comprehensive health services in schools.
| Report
Brief: Sustaining Adolescent Health Service Delivery During Prolonged School Closures
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the GFF published a brief highlighting approaches to sustain the delivery of school health and nutrition services to adolescents during school closures. The report also presents considerations for the resumption of school-based service delivery upon reopening.
| Journal Article
New Publication: Considerations for Monitoring School Health and Nutrition Programs
Recently Frontiers in Public Health published an article on monitoring programs in school health and nutrition (SHN), addressing a major gap in the literature. Key aspects of SHN program monitoring are explored, including: (1) why monitor; (2) what to measure; (3) how to measure; and (4) who measures. Read the full-text article here.