Dear Friends
Members of this forum would expect me to raise questions about where the children fit into this universal access to reliable healthcare information.
My work over three decades in health information linked to the needs of children in middle childhood suggests that the right information delivered at the right time and in the right way helps mobilise children to become key actors and informants within their families and communities and agents of change.
I find it baffling that given the potential to use schools as institutions which can contribute so broadly and deeply to the health of their communities, why school health education curricula and activities are often SO dull, often full of inaccuracy, fail to be tied to the developmental stages, are not connected to the realities of children's lives; are mostly full of dont's rather than do's, and taught by teachers who have little or not training in the topics etc
Since 1989 I have been working on co-creating simple health messages for children to learn and share and figuring out activities which can make mobilising children as health educators FUN. Take a look at our messages on posters, in storybooks and in teachers' guides here www.childrenforhealth.org/resources.
It's not that hard a project to get every single child in the world learning and sharing 100 health messages during their course of their primary schooling. A health 'times table' and a required part of their graduation?
Clare Hanbury
www.childrenforhealth.org
HIFA profile: Clare Hanbury is director of Children for Health. She qualified as a teacher in the UK and then worked in schools in Kenya and Hong Kong. After an MA in Education in Developing Countries and for many years, Clare worked for The Child-to-Child Trust based at the University of London's Institute of Education where, alongside Hugh Hawes and Professor David Morley she worked to help embed the Child-to-Child ideas of children's participation in health – into government and non-government cchild health and education programmes in numerous countries. Clare has worked with these ideas alongside vulnerable groups of children such as refugees and street children. Since her MSc in International Maternal and Child Health, Clare focused on helping government and non-government programmes to design and deliver child-centered health and education programmes where children are active participants. Clare has worked in many countries in East and Southern Africa and in Pakistan, Cambodia and the Yemen. In July 2013, Clare founded the NGO, Children for Health and develops health education materials and and works on health education programmes alongside partners all over the world.
