Posture correction as part of holistic health promotion in Hungarian schools.

Abstract

The primary prevention program of the Hungarian Spine Society was launched in 1995 with two goals: 1. to achieve that all school-children take part regularly in effective posture correcting exercises as part of physical education; and 2. to achieve daily physical education for all school-children. With appropriate governmental legislation and parliamentary decision both goals were integrated into the National Public Health Program in 2001 and 2003 and later in the national educational laws and documents. From 2011 and 2012 holistic health promotion in schools with the goal to reach all children became also prescription for all schools in Hungary. Public health institutions and actors still have to do much: they have to give continuous professional help to the physical education teachers in their posture correcting work and to all teachers in their daily health promoting tasks. The article presents the details of the special posture correcting exercises, their distribution and prospective controlled studies, their place in the national education, the present situation and the further tasks. The article is supplemented by a short report about daily physical education and holistic health promotion in schools: how the prescription was achieved, the essence and the follow up of it, and what are the tasks for the helping public health actors.