The experts from IAP organization highlighted the importance of healthy lifestyle in living a peaceful and prosperous life. Dr Rekha Harish, National Scientific Convener and Core Team Member (SSS) and her team, while interacting with the officers of School Education Department and Master Trainers/Teachers, shared various modules designed for the children (3-10 years) on various aspects of healthy lifestyle. These modules will educate these children about various preventive health care measures such as nutrition, exercise, digital wellness, sleep, mental health, combatting pollution and any kind of addiction at their early age. These children shall serve as a medium and link between their parents and community as they are the future community.
The school-based health promotion program aimed not only at imparting health education and skill upgradation training to students, but also at building capacities of schools to do the same on their own in future, becoming Health Promoting Schools in accordance with the recent call given by WHO and several UN agencies, to which India has been a proud signatory.
Pertinently, the Sankalp, Sampoorna Swasthya (SSS) initiative aims to hold hands with and train the school teachers on various aspects of lifestyle such as Choose Right Eat Right (Balanced diet), Junk in Bin Not Within (Awareness regarding harms of Junk Food), Physical Activity (Convert Screen time to Green time) digital wellness, sleep hygiene, mental health and air pollution, to not only learn about these topics and incorporate them into their daily lives but also to disseminate the knowledge further.
In the first phase, the JUNIOR module has been launched and the primary school teachers of Jammu division are being trained to conduct these workshops in their respective schools so that the messages are disseminated all over through trained colleagues in their school and district subsequently, thus making the intervention and its benefits sustainable in the field of education as well as healthcare.
The interaction programme was attended by the senior officers of School Education Department and more than 100 Master trainers. The department assured to extend full cooperation to the Indian Academy of Pediatric (IAP) team for making the programme a grand success. Dr. Kuldeep Singh, Assistant Coordinator, Samagra Shiksha, coordinated the workshop.