August 2024- The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) has organized a series of training workshops to develop the skills of school health staff and enhance their cognitive abilities to ensure the accuracy and reliability of students’ health data, thereby supporting the National Program to Combat Obesity among Children and Adolescents.

Held at the Ministry’s headquarters in Dubai, the Teacher Training Institute in Ajman, and Sharjah, the workshops focused on training school nurses and physical education support staff on recording anthropometric measurements for students aged 5 to 17 years.

The workshops aim to develop standardized protocols for collecting and analyzing data related to early obesity indicators, improving preventive health policies, and enabling more informed decision-making based on precise scientific evidence.

Enhancing wellbeing

The four-day training workshops featured several sub-sessions, as part of the Ministry’s strategy to manage preventive and community health programs, improve quality of life nationwide, and ensure accurate data collection for the National Program to Combat Obesity among Children and Adolescents. They also aimed to promote public health among community members, especially school students.

Reliable and accurate data

The sessions provided targeted training to enhance the technical skills of school nurses in accurately measuring students’ weight and height using approved anthropometric standards. Moreover, this is to ensure the collection of reliable and precise data, necessary for assessing obesity prevalence among students, identifying overweight cases, and standardizing the recording and consistency of their health data

Data Filling Training

The workshops, featuring a mix of interactive activities and theoretical lectures, aimed to establish clear concepts and procedures to ensure accurate data entry.

They focused on training participants to fill out the student data record forms correctly and completely, a necessary step for maintaining high-quality data in the National Programme to Combat Obesity in Children and Adolescents.

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Additionally, the workshops prepared participants to become trainers themselves, equipping them to teach school nursing staff these essential skills and procedures, thereby expanding the impact and reach of these workshops.

MoHAP efforts

HE Dr Hussain Abdul Rahman Al Rand, Assistant Undersecretary for the Public Health Sector, emphasized that this training workshop is part of the Ministry’s ongoing efforts to promote community health and achieve the objectives of the National Programme to Combat Obesity in Children and Adolescents. Furthermore, it is one of several initiatives aimed at equipping school health staff with the latest knowledge and skills necessary to provide exceptional health care for children.

Early detection of obesity

For her part, Nouf Khamis Al Ali, Director of the Health Promotion Department, stated that this training workshop is part of a larger effort to step up the Ministry’s work in monitoring and detecting childhood obesity. “Early intervention is key to keeping kids healthy, and the Ministry is committed to organizing such workshops and training programs to improve the quality of school health data. Better data means better health care for students, which in turn positively impacts their overall health and academic performance.”

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