School Health and Nutrition

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. 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.