Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health (JCSH)

As a consortium of provincial and territorial health and education ministries, the JCSH’s mandate is to work across these sectors (and with other sectors as appropriate) to support health in the school setting. The JCSH tries to achieve its mandate through leadership, capacity building and knowledge development and exchange. The JCSH addresses its efforts to advance Comprehensive School Health through six topic areas – areas that are important in any school: Positive Mental Health, Physical Activity, Healthy Eating, Substance Use, Injury Prevention, and Healthy Relationships.Specifically related to mental health, the JCSH has worked closely with researchers W. Morrison and Associates, and an advisory committee of education and health specialists throughout Canada to develop the Positive Mental Health (PMH) toolkit. The PMH toolkit uses a strengths-based approach, recognizing that all students and schools have strengths and gifts that can be supported and nurtured. The PMH toolkit is one of the modules of The Healthy School Planner, a free online tool that school teams can use to assess their school’s current health environment and make plans for improvements. The Healthy School Planner was developed for the JCSH by the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact (Propel)at the University of Waterloo, under the guidance of an Advisory Committee formed by the Pan-Canadian JCSH.  To view the Healthy School Planner go to www.jcsh-cces.ca and click on “The Healthy School Planner” icon.