Introduction:
It is now widely recognised that a significant and long-term health and educational crisis impacting youth worldwide persists in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings highlight the immediate necessity to support school leaders and teachers due to young people’s exponentially growing health and wellbeing needs. To address this need, we provide an innovative, universally-relevant, evidence-based wellbeing framework emphasising four key domains: individual attributes, environmental factors, social interconnections, and choice – as focal points for schools, teachers, parents and policy-makers.
The Study:
The aim of this study was to develop a practical tool to support schools and teachers to cater for the increased physical, mental health and wellbeing needs of youth. We used Sen's Capabilities Approach as a lens to examine the existing and emerging research focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, issues affecting young people and school health promotion and investigated changes to individuals and school communities and learning environments, including changes to online learning. We identified and mapped young people's physical and mental health resource changes due to the pandemic. Proceeding to examine internal (individual/personal factors) and external conversion factors (environmental and social), we also investigated potential capabilities (sets of functions and choice/agency) to identify strategies to support young people to function and flourish through and after the COVID-19 pandemic. This process led to the identification of four central enablers, which were utilised in the design of the International Framework for School Health Promotion (IFSHP).
Findings and Recommendations:
Our findings indicate schools, principals, teachers and parents require urgent support due to exponentially growing health and educational crisis effecting young people. We offer a free and novel framework for school health promotion, to assist schools to evaluate their existing school health programs, policies, and practices. Based on our findings it is recommended:
· Whole school health promotion programs address multiple health risk factors to ensure young people are provided with safe and inclusive learning environments that support physical, social and mental health and wellbeing across the classroom, school and community level.
· Focus should be placed on ‘conversion education’ (i.e. how young people can draw on, and utilise their existing resources and effectively implement strategies to improve their own physical and mental health and wellbeing).
· Increase education focusing on the importance of maintaining physical and mental health with a key focus on physical activity, sleep, nutrition, mental health with an emphasise social and emotional learning to enhance young people’s health capabilities.
· Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are particularly vulnerable post the pandemic and require targeted support.
Conclusion:
Schools continue to serve as pivotal locations for health promotion, with school leaders and teachers retaining their influential roles as community members able to positively shape young people's health and well-being. School systems are encouraged to utilise the IFSHP to evaluate and innovate existing school health promotion programs to enhance the physical, mental, and social well-being capabilities of our youth - a vital cornerstone for future societal resilience. Timely deployment of this framework stands to profoundly shape the future well-being of our youth.