Health Promotion International Advance Access published online on September 17, 2008
Health Promotion International, doi:10.1093/heapro/dan026
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Article |
Setting the stage for school health-promoting programmes for Deaf children in Spain
1Faculty of Education, University of Alicante, Campus de San Vicente del Raspeig, Ap. 99, E-03080 Alicante, Spain 2Department of Public Health, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain - CIBER Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP) 3 CNSE Foundation for the Suppression of Communication Barriers, Madrid, Spain
* Corresponding author. E-mail: irmamu{at}ua.es
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Abstract |
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Implementing health-promoting programmes for the most excluded and at-risk social groups forms a key part of any efforts to address underserved populations and reduce health inequalities in society. However, many at-risk children, particularly children in Deaf communities, are not reached, or are poorly served, by health-promoting programmes within the school setting. This is so because schools are effective as health-promoting environments for d/Deaf children only to the extent that they properly address their unique communication needs and ensure they are both able and enabled to learn in a communication-rich and supportive psycho-social environment. This article examines how the usually separate strands of school health promotion and d/Deaf education might be woven together and illustrates research with Deaf community members that involves them and gives their perspective. The primary objective of this study was to map Deaf pilot bilingual education programmes in Spain—one of the first countries to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations. (2006) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Resolution A/RES/61/106.)—with particular attention to their compliance to the Convention's article 24. Following pre-testing, 516 key informants were surveyed by mail (response rate: 42.08%) by using a snow-ball key-informant approach, within a Participatory Action Research framework, at a national, regional and local level. The results show that although some schools have achieved recommended standards, bilingual programmes are in various stages of formulation and implementation and are far from being equally distributed across the country, with only four regions concentrating more than 70% of these practices. This uneven geographical distribution of programmes probably reflects more basic differences in the priority given by regions, provinces, and municipalities to the Deaf community's needs and rights as an important policy objective and may reinforce or widen inequalities by favouring or discriminating rather than achieving access and equity for this noticeably overlooked community.
Key words: school health promotion; deaf children; human rights; community participation