Our Impact on "Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development"

In September 2015, the United Nation (UN) General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UN SDG 17 states “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.” It recognises multi-stakeholder partnerships as important vehicles for mobilising and sharing knowledge, expertise, technologies and financial resources to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, particularly developing countries. Goal 17 further seeks to encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships. Building on the principle of “leaving no one behind”, the new Agenda emphasises a holistic approach to achieving sustainable development for all.

The AHI HPS intervention contributes to the achievement of seven of the 17 SDGs.

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

·       By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.

AHI mission is to promotes good health and quality education in low-income communities, which are the fundamental approaches to tackle poverty. Health, education and income are strongly interconnected. In early life, healthier children achieve better results at school. Later in life, poor health and low education are associated with lack of job opportunities and lower income. Having sufficient income enables adoption of a healthy lifestyle, leading to good health, which in turn increase work productivity. Furthermore, low income and fewer resources force people to live in socially deprived neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods are often economically marginalised and characterised by lack of safe drinking water, lack of sanitation, fewer high-quality schools, less access to sources of healthy food with an oversupply of fast food restaurants and outlets that promote unhealthy foods. Furthermore, they are more prone to environmental hazards such as higher levels of toxins, air and water pollution, hazardous waste, pesticides, and industrial chemicals. All together these factors perpetuate poverty throughout generations.

Goal 2: Zero Hunger

·       By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.

·       By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons.

AHI HPS model includes distribution of healthy food to families of the school children enrolled in the initiative.

Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being

By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.

·      Strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol.

·      Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.

·      Strengthen the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in all countries, as appropriate

·      Support the research and development of vaccines and medicines for the communicable and noncommunicable diseases that primarily affect developing countries, provide access to affordable essential medicines and vaccines, in accordance with the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, which affirms the right of developing countries to use to the full the provisions in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights regarding flexibilities to protect public health, and, in particular, provide access to medicines for all.

All four major interventions in the AHI HPS model contribute to good health and well-being. They are education, health promotion, health care and community involvement activities.

Goal 4: Quality Education

·       By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable

AHI HPS model educates school children and their families to flourish in life; higher school achievements; better health; better capacity for work; wellbeing throughout the life course. The AHI HPS model understands education in a broader way rather than is traditionally the case. The AHI HPS model provides support for the intellectual and emotional development. The former includes attention, perception, memory, language, learning, and higher reasoning. The latter includes decision-making and problem-solving, creative and critical thinking, communication and interpersonal skills, self-awareness and empathy, assertiveness and self-control, and resilience and coping with emotions and stress. For these purposes AHI coaches take on the role of a leader who helps the schoolchildren to set goals in their walk life course. Developing the attributes listed above improves schoolchildren’s health and social behaviour (e.g.: caring for oneself and others, trust, attachment, tolerance of others, reciprocity), social capital (e.g.: family ties, friends/friendship ties, and social networks) promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development. AHI coaches are there to guide, motivate, encourage in addition to teach. The main goal is to empower schoolchildren with enough cognitive processes and life skills that they are eventually confident enough to take control over their life circumstances. Furthermore, by promoting good health among schoolchildren AHI HPS model reduces school absenteeism and increases school achievement.

Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

·       Support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management.

AHI includes the UNICEF Wash, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in schools, which is a well stablished health initiative designed to improve water and sanitation management as well as personal hygiene.

Goal 10: Reduce Inequalities

·       By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average

·       By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.

AHI reduces social inequalities in health by addressing the challenging ‘inverse care law’ proposed thirty years ago - those who most need medical care are least likely to receive it. In addition, AHI addresses challenges highly prevalent in socially deprived populations and much less prevalent in affluent communities. Furthermore, AHI provides low-income communities with the social, emotional and physical tools for children in low-income communities to have a good start in life.

Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

·       By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.

AHI component healthy food distribution addresses food waste. Food distribution is delivered in collaboration with existing approaches, for example as adopted by members of the Global Foodbank Network (GFN). Food banking systems consist of capturing surplus food of which would otherwise be wasted, from farms, manufacturers, distributors, retail stores, consumers, and other sources, and deliver it to those in need through an established network of community agencies engaging all sectors of society in the process. This action significantly reduces food waste and their harmful environmental impact.

our impact on “Making Every School a Health Promoting School.”

Recently, WHO and UNESCO have also launched a new initiative “Making Every School a Health Promoting School” through the development and promotion of Global Standards for Health Promoting Schools (HPS).

Despite the fact that the concept of HPS was articulated by WHO, UNESCO and UNICEF back in 1992, only few countries have successfully implemented Health Promoting Schools at scale.

AHI developed and delivers a simple, scalable and sustainable operational model for the WHO’s Health Promoting School initiative.

Everyone gains when schools adopt the AHI HPS intervention because:

·      Children benefits from enjoying better social, physical, intellectual, mental and emotional wellbeing, and the ability to take full advantage of every opportunity for education. They improve their social behaviour, family ties and develop a healthier lifestyle, which in turn leads to higher school achievements, better health, better capacity for work and wellbeing throughout the life course;

·      Parents benefit from gaining a broader knowledge base about local health problems, learning important new health information and life skills by taking part in their children’s education;

·      Schools benefit from establishing links to important international organisations such as UNICEF and World Health Organisation, local health services and by having additional resources, as well as parents’ active participation in school activities and involvement;

·      Community benefits from better educated and healthier people, which is an asset to community as a whole;

·      Local business benefits from better-educated and more productive employees;

·      The neighbourhood benefits from a stronger basis for economic development.

How the AHI Hps intervention improves education?

Investment in education are more likely to pay off if the school uses its potential as an organisation to promote and protect health. AHI HPS intervention offers a way to acquire the greatest rewards from resources devoted to schools. Implementing the AHI HPS intervention increases school achievements because:

·      Children who are ill, hungry, weakened by parasitic disease, malnourished and scared are not capable of learning well,

·      School staff who experience improved health, morale and skills can do their jobs more effectively - educate children well;

·      Children and teachers are more productive when the school is   clean, equipped with suitable sanitary facilities and safe water, protected from infectious diseases and from discrimination, harassment, abuse and violence, and have policies and actions that aim to prevent tobacco use, alcohol and substance abuse, and sexual behaviours that are likely to result in less sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy, and conditions that are conducive to better mental health.

·      Reduces absenteeism among children as their attendance drops when they or their family members are ill, or when students fear violence or abuse on the way to, from or in school;

·      Reduces absenteeism among school staff as their attendance drops when they are ill.

Our contribution to address landmark Seventy-fourth World Health Assembly resolution (WHA74.5).

The Resolution recommends a shift from the traditional curative approach towards a preventive approach that includes promotion of oral health within the family, schools and workplaces, and includes timely, comprehensive and inclusive care within the primary health-care system.

The resolution urges Member States to foster the integration of oral health within their national policies, including through the promotion of articulated inter-ministerial and inter-sectoral work; to address key risk factors of oral diseases shared with other noncommunicable diseases such as high intake of free sugars, tobacco use and harmful use of alcohol, and to enhance the capacities of oral health professionals. It also During the discussion, clear agreement emerged that oral health should be firmly embedded within the noncommunicable disease agenda and that oral health-care interventions should be included in universal health coverage programmes.

The AHI offers to policy makers a HPS model that has integrated oral health not only with non-communicable diseases (NCD) but also with communicable diseases (CD), and promotes oral health by addressing common risk factors to those diseases (NCD: tobacco, sugars and alcohol abuse; CD: hygiene) within the family, schools, and community. Universal Dental Care is provided to school children at school setting, within the primary health-care system, and includes a shift from conventional dentistry to the modern biological minimally invasive management of tooth decay approach.

The World Health Assembly delegates asked WHO: to develop, by 2022, a draft global strategy on tackling oral diseases for consideration by WHO governing bodies in 2022 and by 2023; to translate the global strategy into an action plan for oral health; to develop “best buy” interventions on oral health

The Affordable Health Research Centre has piloted this novel health promoting school to community intervention and the data will be available in accordance to the Guidelines for Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting, and the AHI HPS model is available to governments and academics to implement it worldwide and continuing evaluating its impact.

In summary

AHI actions are aligned to major United Nations; UNICEF and World Health Organisation policies.

• "Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" and “Making Every School a Health Promoting School.”

• “Making Every School a Health Promoting School”

• “Address the burden of oral diseases”