V. Padmini, a student of the Delhi Tamil Education Association School, said: “This parliament taught us many things which are not there in the textbooks. We know that cigarettes cause cancer, but we did not know that every cigarette. Contains 300 harmful chemicals and these, along with nicotine, reduce lifespan by 14 minutes.”

Other students said the parliament gave them the opportunity to “speak their minds.”

Priyanka, a science student from the Government Girls School at Andrews Ganj, said: “ This parliament allowed us to talk freely about AIDS. We were allowed to raise any questions on the subject. In course of the debates, we came to know of the several ways in which one can contact the deadly disease.”

She added that her friends at school were very curious about the health parliament and wanted to participate in the programme.

Dr. Reddy said the health awareness campaign was a success in the government schools. “The private schools have several programmes which raise the health awareness of the students. In government schools such things are missing and we found the students from such schools are more receptive to the health awareness programmes. Even teachers of these schools want to actively participate in such programmes.”

YOUNG BID FOR FUTURE HEALTH

The Telegraph Wednesday 28 February 2001

Health Educationbegins at school and spreads to the home and community, believes Delhi NGO, SHAN. G.S Mudur Reports:

On the series of cold, foggy mornings in New Delhi this last month, groups of school students walked the city streets pasting posters with vital health messages at strategic locations- at bus stops, in the markets and around residential localities. This is the first phase of project. Humne Seekha Hai, a rather facile title for an ambitious programme intended to convert schools into portals for community health education through their students.

Students from some 30 schools across the capital are disseminating health information, primarily through posters, addressing simple health issues like food and nutrition, tobacco addition, and the benefits of physical activity. The programme- launched by the School Health Action Network (SHAN), a New Delhi -based non- government organisation - may soon be emulated across the country by other NGOs and schools.

SHAN, along with the ministry of health, is hoping that the programme will turn out to be the model for schools elsewhere in the country. “ We believe that such school- centred community health education will cement the commitment of students themselves to healthy lifestyle practices as well as help to promote healthy lifestyles within the community.” says Dr. K Srinath Reddy, professor of cardiology at AIIMS ( All India Institute of Medical Sciences, ) New Delhi, and coordinator of SHAN.

Reddy says that the long-term goal of the programme is to reduce the burden of lifestyle related disease in India perhaps two decades from now or beyond. Students in school now bear the brunt of the burden of lifestyle-related diseases 20 years from now. Yet they have little influence in determining health policies that affect these. SHAN has been trying to get the school students to adopt an active position on policy issues, based on informed debate. It is also helping students to voice their opinions in various ways, and so attract the attention of the policy- makers and the community in general.

Experts believe that there is not enough emphasis on health education in the routine school curriculum today. During the usual science lessons, school students do indeed learn about the importance of a balanced diet, minerals and vitamins, as well as the consequences of nutritional deficiencies. However, such lessons are now largely viewed as just another component of the routine curriculum. “We ‘re trying to get students to recognise the connection between health and lifestyles,” says Reddy.

Getting school students to first assimilate and then prepare and deliver health messages to the community at large involved several years of preparatory work. SHAN is actually the offspring of a school -based health education programme known as HRIDAY (Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth)- the latter was launched during the early 1990s by doctors and medical students at AIIMS. It involved providing extracurricular health education through lectures, posters, and text-based material to school students. The material covered diet, nutrition, physical activity, stress management, and avoidance of addictions like tobacco.

India, along with other developing countries, is now witnessing a transition in the field of health, with chronic lifestyle- related diseases in adulthood expected to become a major public health problem in coming years, says Dr. Reddy. To avoid lifestyle related diseases, it’s essential that a healthy lifestyle is adopted early on in life.

Controlled experiments have already established the effectiveness of school- based health education. In a project supported by the US National Institute of Health, Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth conducted a controlled experiment in which boys and girls from 15 private and 15 government schools in New Delhi were divided into three groups. One group received health education on the negative effects of tobacco use and smoking through posters, booklets and classroom activities organised by teachers or peer-leaders. The second group received similar health messages at home through activities initiated by parents and older siblings. The third group too received anti-tobacco health education, but following a significant delay.

At the end of the study, the researchers found that the students in the first two groups who had received health information early showed a lower than the anticipated rise in experimentation with smoking. “The experiment thus showed that education intervention can indeed reduce the number of students who’ll begin to experiment with smoking.” Says Monika Arora, a social scientist with SHAN.

The NGO believes that health education activities have led to a rise in health-m related knowledge among school students. The next step was to get these students to spread whatever they had leant into the community at large and thus Project Hamne Seekha Hai was born. In January this year students of the Kendriya Vidyalaya at Masjit Moth in South Delhi became the first to launch the project by putting up posters against tobacco addiction at bus stops in the capital city. A week later, students of St. Marks School put up posters at the various local markets, while the students from Gyan Mandir Public School convinced local residents to accept their colourful posters on health.

Over the past month, at least 30 other schools I and around New Delhi participated in similar activities in their respective localities, declares Arora. “We want to have at least 200 schools in Delhi involved in the programme by the middle of this year,” she said.

The programme has merited the attention of the ministry of health and it has asked SHAN to consider ways of disseminating the health promotion model else where in the country. To this end, SHAN has plans to invite various NGOs, schools, and public health officials from other states for a national workshop later this year, where they will discuss ways and means of expanding this into a nationwide programme. The goal as of now is to get at least two schools from very state involved in such a project