Vaiciunas, T., & Zaborskis, A. (2016).
School principals’ about adolescents’ lifestyle issues and school efforts to solve themTomas Vaiciunas.
Background. School – an important health promotion place that can deploy a variety of wellness programs and encourages the whole school community and each of its members to participate in the development of general health education programs, cooperation between schools and programs. In health promotion process among adolescents special attention must be paid to the children’s activities competences and active involvement of children in health promotion activities through teamwork approach. However and parent should be actively involved to these actions through modern and innovative measures. Methods, Cross-sectional data were collected in 2010 and 2014 as the part of WHO International Health behavior in school-aged children (HBSC) study in Lithuania (N = 238). Surveys were filled by school principal or deputy. Results. In one third of school environment prevails criminality, manifestations of alcoholism and drug addiction, constant heavy traffic. At school community, the biggest problems referred to: bullying among students (37.8%); smoking on school grounds (31.0%); physical conflicts-fights (11.9%); adolescents are tend to feel chronic fatigue (19.1%). 80% of schools have strategic action plans in health promotion, but only part of them (69%) could clearly identify them. Only half of the Lithuanian school communities (54.5%) actively invite parents to join the school-based health promotion activities. In most of schools, main form to identify students’ opinion about their school programs and strategies in field of health education is based on “passive-democracy” – questionnaire surveys (97.6%); through online school sites (56.5%); opinion-offer boxes (38.6%). Conclusions. Health promotion component is more passive experience, rather than a continuous all-encompassing action in Lithuania schools.