Nurturing children and adolescents into valuable human assets of the nation is a very important responsibility for schools. Therefore schools must adopt strategies that can embrace the health needs of their entire staff and properly utilize opportunities to promote health.

   In other words, to fulfill the mission of safeguarding the health of schoolchildren, the earlier means of school hygiene must be more actively strengthened and expanded in order to achieve whole-person care.

   The WHO defines a health-promoting school as one where "all members of the school community work together to provide students with integrated and positive experiences and structures which promote and protect their health" (WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific, 1996).

   The WHO has been actively promoting the Health-promoting School Programs since 1995. Based on a setting approach, schools are regarded as places where students spend a lot of their time during their development.

    As such, a health-promoting school is defined as "a school that can continue strengthening its capacity as a healthy setting for living, learning and working" and one that can achieve the following tasks:

1.     Unite health and education administrators, teachers, teacher unions, students, parents, health service providers and community leaders to transform a school into healthy a place. 

2.     Diligently provide a healthy environment, health education and health services. In addition, integrate school and community development programs, provide employee health promotion programs, nutrition and food safety programs, sports and leisure activities opportunities, mental health counseling, and social support and mental health programs.

3.     Implement policies that respect individual well-being and personal dignity, provide multiple channels for successful opportunities, and thank individuals for their efforts and achievements.

4.     Simultaneously promote the health of students, school personnel, families and community members, and work with community leaders to help them understand the extent to which community practices reinforce or endanger health and educational quality (WHO, 1998).

5.     Diligently promote the health of school personnel, families, community members and students.

   Based on the 6 domains of health promoting schools defined by the WHO, specifically School health policies, The physical environment of the school, The school’s social environment, Community relations, Personal health skills and Health services, the former Department of Health and the Ministry of Education have been jointly formulating school health policies since 2002 to develop teacher and student consensus, promote community participation and provide health services, and through constructing a campus environment for learning and cultivating healthy living, enhance the overall health of children and adolescents.