Achieving good standards in health promoting schools: preliminary analysis one year after the implementation of the Hong Kong Healthy Schools Award scheme.

Background: Improving health literacy can be a strategy for the achievement of public health goals, and the concept of the Health Promoting School can help to build on the health literacy of students. The Centre for Health Education and Health Promotion of The Chinese University of Hong Kong launched the Hong Kong Healthy Schools Award (HKHSA) in 2001. This paper reports the results for the ten secondary schools that underwent assessment in 2002.

Methods: Based on the overall score for each school, cluster analysis was performed. Each cluster of schools reflected different levels of HKHSA achievement.

Results: This study has shown that those schools reaching high Health Promoting School standards have adopted the concept of a whole school approach in addressing health and social issues, rather than topic-based and school-located health promotion. The schools performing less satisfactorily mainly follow a prescriptive approach.

Conclusions: These results are a good source of reference for other schools in their Health Promoting Schools programmes.