You are here
School Health and Nutrition (SHN)
Millions of school-age children are affected by serious, yet easily treatable and preventable, illnesses, which inhibit their ability to learn. Save the Children’s School Health and Nutrition (SHN) program is a cost-effective strategy to address a number of the health problems facing school-age children, through health education and health services such as deworming and micronutrient supplementation and healthy environment. Our programs are active in 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. These interventions are simple, safe and familiar, and address problems that are widespread and recognized as important within the community, thereby helping children participate in school.
Save the Children works closely with schools and their communities to ensure proper sanitation through building latrines and appropriate hand washing facilities and providing access to safe drinking water. Most importantly, through education, students learn how to adapt their daily habits to improve their health, nutrition, hygiene and prevent HIV and AIDS, gaining these important skills and behaviors for life. Whilst focusing on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and health education through schools, Save the Children’s SHN programs are nevertheless diverse and adapted to local needs - including for example vision and hearing screening, oral health promotion, malaria prevention and treatment, obesity reduction and violence prevention.
SHN interventions have been shown to improve not only children’s health and nutrition, but also their learning potential and life choices both in the short and long-term. SHN interventions particularly benefit poor and disadvantaged children, who have the most to gain both nutritionally and educationally. Also, by focusing on the special needs for girls – for example through Menstrual Health Management (MHM) – our SHN programs are helping reduce barriers to learning for girls and enhance their overall health.
It is now widely recognized that SHN programs are an important instrument in enabling children to benefit from quality education and reach their educational potential. As such, they are recognized as making a significant contribution towards countries’ efforts to achieve Education for All (EFA) and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Within Save the Children, the SHN programs work closely with the Education Programs to ensure that children in communities served by Save the Children are well educated and healthy. Similarly, School Health and Nutrition Programs are a good continuation of Early Child Development (ECD) programs. Our School Health and Nutrition Programs are recognized as a global model and are in alignment with the UN and World Bank framework for school health and nutrition called FRESH (Focusing Resources on School Health and Nutrition).
-
FRESH School Health and Nutrition (SHN) Webinar: 20 Years of Experience in Integrated School Health and Nutrition Programming- February 2019
What are Save the Children's achievements in its 20 years of experience with school health and nutrition programming? What are the elements of its integrated programming in health and nutrition for school-age children? What are the priorities for Save the
-
Adding a Nutrition Behavior Change Communication Component to an Early Childhood Development Intervention in Malawi
The Nutrition Embedded Evaluation Program Impact Evaluation (NEEP-IE) cluster randomized control trial (CRCT) aimed to assess the effectiveness of implementing an agriculture and nutritional intervention through preschools, known as community-based child
-
Improving Child Nutrition and Development through Preschools in Malawi
Some 12,000 community preschools in Malawi serve 45 percent of the county’s preschool population. Yet, because of food insecurity and communities’ difficulties in providing preschoolers with a midmorning meal, these schools may not survive. To address thi
-
Save the Children Global Nutrition Factsheet 2018
The global Nutrition factsheet summarises Save the Children's nutrition approach, advocacy, programming and research work around the world for 2018. It also includes links to Save the Children recent publications School, Health and Nutrition (SHN)
-
School Health and Nutrition Program Update: Issue 14- 2018
2018 marked the 20th year of SHN programming at Save the Children. In 1998, Save the Children made a commitment to SHN and piloted SHN programming using Child Sponsorship funding. It is exciting to know that those pilot programs proved so significant and
-
Drinking Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Schools: Global baseline report 2018
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) are responsible for monitoring global progress towards water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets. The global effort to achiev
-
How to Improve Health and Learning in School-Age Children
Common childhood health conditions have a consequence on children's education, and ultimately a longer-term effect on their society's prosperity and development as a whole. Schools are a great platform for health interventions, it is cheap, safe, and cost
-
Istwa Terèz ak Toni
“Terez ak Toni” is a flipchart material for teachers to use for hygiene education in Haitian Creole. It contains a story about a girl, “Terez”, who eats without washing her hands and becomes very ill because a bad microbe gets into her stomach. She then s
-
Nutrition: 10 messages for children to learn and share
This poster provides 10 key messages about nutrition adapted for children. The second page contains Frequently Asked Questions on how the infographic can be adapted and used. School, Health and Nutrition (SHN)
-
The FRESH School Health and Nutrition (SHN) Webinar Series
The School Health and Nutrition webinar series provides monthly presentations by leading policy-makers, researchers and implementers engaged in improving the health and education of children in low and middle-income countries across the globe. The webina
-
FRESH School Health and Nutrition (SHN) Webinar: Home Grown School Feeding- October 2018
Can Preschools or Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centers be a venue for promoting nutritious food consumption among young children? Can an integrated agriculture and nutrition intervention through an ECD center benefit children’s diet and reduce stunti
-
School Health and Nutrition Program Update: Issue 13- 2017
Despite the many changes in the world affecting the landscape of School Health and Nutrition (SHN), the programme had a productive year. They co-hosted a regional gathering of many of Save the Children's SHN practitioners in Manila together with Save the