SCHOOL HEALTH EDUCATION PROGRAM IN THE UAE: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

Health education is an essential aspect of health promotion. As such, health related skills have become crucial factors of individual’s and community’s efficiency in the 21st century. Health education involves learning of knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, skills and competencies. Also, it is a vital measure for students to identify risk behaviors and conditions which influence them. Thus, the main components of health education are disease prevention and early detection and health information and practice. Therefore, it is encouraging students to lead a healthy lifestyle. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations identified strategies to improve students’ health to promote learning. In addition, the CDC developed broad curriculum for school health education that has been adopted by the ministries of education in many countries all over the world (Maurer & Smith 2012). Therefore, the comprehensive focus of health education is not merely to increase knowledge about the health behaviour of individuals and communities but also to develop skills that demonstrate “various forms of action to address social, economic and environmental determinants of health” (WHO 2012). Hence, health education is attained through approaches that necessitate participation, interaction and critical analysis that are going beyond the dissemination of information (WHO 2017). This review aims to shed light on the evolution of School Health Education Program that was an initiative in the year 2013 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and currently it is implemented in all governmental secondary schools in the UAE.