Punjab News Express/Y.S. Rana
CHANDIGARH: Non-communicable diseases are linked with our behavior and around 80 per cent of heart, diabetes, stroke and 70 per cent of cancer diseases can be prevented by adopting healthy lifestyle, says Dr J.S. Thakur, Professor of Community Medicines, School of Public Health, PGI, Chandigarh.
Dr Thakur came to limelight recently for his “Health Promoting School’s accreditation model. While talking to Daily Post Dr Thakur dwelt at length about his model that he worked for more than two years to study the life-style diseases and he came to conclusion that ‘Catch Them Young’ should introduce in each school on health-related issues. He was of the opinion that if we really wanted to stop spread of non-communicable diseases we have strong health promoting system at school, workplace and community levels.
On the basis of his study, he has recommended at least 20-week of healthy lifestyle promoting intervention package in school curriculum in each academic year for sustainable impact and behavioral change to reduce the burden of lifestyle disorders in school-going children.
An accreditation manual for HPS was drafted after discusstion with key stakeholders and a qualitative analysis of the stakeholders’ meeting outcome has generated 26 parameters for accreditation checklist for HPS. On the basis of this, a scoring system included all 26 parameters was developed (with 1 to 3 points award to each parameters). On the basis of score, each school would be graded in gold, silver, bronze and platinum, said he.
Elaborating the pattern of scoring he said that cut-off score of 100-120; 121-150; 151-200 and more than 200 points of schools would be categorized as bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels respectively.
For purpose of accreditation of school, he said that the Quality Council of India has also been approached and its involvement in project.
He further stated that 26 parameters have been classified into eight specific domains. The tool was pilot tested in eight schools and the reliability score of the checklist was 0.7. Chandigarh has been adopted by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) to fund Health Promoting Schools. Besides, he has also developed health promoting models for workplace setting level with funding from the World Health Organization and community setting level.
Dr Thakur said that the primary objective of the study was to examine the impact of multi-component lifestyle interventions on weight and body mass index (BMI) of school children. Dr Thakur said that state while drafting its action plan should incorporate health promoting measures with main focus at school, workplace and community levels.
He has prepared a fact sheet about non-communicable diseases in Chandigarh and revealed that 14 per cent of population was diabetes and added that city was topped in breast cancer and lung cancer was more prevalent among males. “In such a scenario, it becomes of paramount importance to have a pool proof health promoting system, ” he says.
Dr Thakur belongs to district Una in Himachal Pradesh, studied in a village school rose to the post of country head in the World Health Organization (WHO) for non-communicable diseases and mental health for three years. And now pioneer of health promoting system at three level, has about 100 publications to his credit those were reviewed scientific international and national journals. He has also been awarded the best oral presentation at international level.