Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which children and young people are being positioned as change agents for families through school health promotion initiatives in New Zealand. Design/methodology/approach: The paper maps and describes the kinds of policies and initiatives that directly or indirectly regard children as…

Purpose: Health promotion can fall into a victim blaming approach and put social pressure on particular students who could be marginalized due to their personal, economical, cultural, social or ethnic characteristics, for example, students who are obese, drug users or HIV carriers. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss ways in which…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explain the rationale and potential for the WHO health promoting schools (HPS) to improve children's oral health, and describe validated quantitative methodologies and qualitative approaches to measure program impact. Design/Methodology/Approach: Critical discussion of the impact of poor oral health and…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to show how children's health and wellbeing are continuously influenced by violence, divorce, family transience, environmental concerns, terrorism within and outside the country's borders and, most recently, threats of and acts of war. This study investigates the perceived needs of fourth-grade elementary…

Purpose: The paper examines African immigrant parents' views on dental decay and whether such views affect their decision to obtain dental insurance for their children. The paper also examines the cultural underpinnings of the immigrants' oral health care practices. Design/methodology/approach: The data for the study were collected in the states…

Adolescent health service provision is an area of growing concern in the UK, where a number of studies have indicated that young people in their teenage years find accessing formal health services difficult. The Bodyzone Project in Oxfordshire is an innovative programme aimed at bringing health services into schools to ensure greater…

This paper discusses some of the health implications of data produced in the course of a research project that explored the usefulness of the concept of "social capital" in relation to the health and well-being of children. The research used qualitative methods to explore 12-15 year olds' subjective experiences of their neighbourhoods,…

Increasing numbers of young people use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for education, work and leisure activities. Research on ICT and Upper Limb Disorders (ULDs) in adults has shown that functional impairment, pain and discomfort in the upper limbs, neck and shoulder increases with frequency and duration of exposure to computer…