Health Promotion and School Health: the Health Visiting Role in Greece

Background: Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health. Schools intend to help pupils acquire the knowledge and develop the skills theyneed to participate fully in adult life. School is regarded as constituting a very important arena for health education among children and young people and furthermore, it is seen as an important context for health promotion, mainly because it reaches a large proportion of the population for many years. A large body of evidence strongly support the fact that education and health are two concepts purely interdependent in many ways and children cannot make the most of educational opportunities if their health is impaired. One of the core elements of Health Visiting profession should be safeguarding children by conducting school visits and implement screening tests, health education programmes and school health programmes in general. Some of the best opportunities for positively influencing the health of young people and preventing the initiation of the health risk behaviors are found in the school setting.Conclusions: A whole school approach and community development work can be particularly effective in building the health capacity of communities.