DASH FAQs

DASH stands for Dedicated Action for School Health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a healthy school as one that consistently strengthens its capacity as a healthy setting for learning, playing, and working. In a healthy school, students have many opportunities in the classroom, and in every aspect of their school experience to foster their healthy physical, mental, social and intellectual development.

The key premise of a healthy school is that healthier students learn better and better educated students are healthier. Healthy schools, also known as health-promoting schools, work with partners from the health and education sectors, and with those from the broader community, to help students develop healthy habits that will last throughout their lives. To encourage and support their efforts, many healthy schools adopt a Comprehensive School Health (CSH) approach. To learn more about this approach, please view this video introducing CSH. To learn more about Healthy Schools, visit https://www.healthyschoolsbc.ca.

Healthy Schools is a Ministry of Health initiative managed by DASH. DASH creates, develops, administers and manages programs and initiatives in support of healthy schools by using a comprehensive school health approach.

School health promotion has been practiced in virtually every industrialized country for well over 50 years. What’s different today is the model and approach used. There has been movement away from a medical model to a comprehensive or “whole” school approach, with a healthy living focus embedded in all aspects of the broader school environment. That whole school approach is now what is known as “healthy schools”.