Educational and Health Promotion Posters

» Lifelong Health – Our Tamariki Series

» Build Your Future on Solid Foundations

» Let’s Talk About It – Teens

» Wellbeing | Pito‘Enua

» Health and Wellbeing Throughout the Life Course

Lifelong Health – Our Tamariki Series

This poster series has been created to raise awareness of the importance of a healthy start to life and how this contributes to lifelong wellbeing.

The posters complement the Lifelong Health – Our Tamariki booklet, developed as a health resource for new and prospective parents. They are designed to promote the booklet, which is also available in printed or digital format.

Build Your Future on Solid Foundations

Health interventions in early life play a crucial role in reducing the risk of developing chronic diseases later on. By addressing risk factors and promoting healthy behaviors from a young age, these interventions can significantly influence long-term health outcomes.

Early life interventions can modify developmental trajectories and enhance protective factors, leading to improved cognitive abilities, emotional regulation, and physical health. Actions taken during critical periods of development, such as preconception, childhood, and adolescence can mitigate the impact of adverse experiences and environmental factors that contribute to chronic disease risk. This life course approach ensures that health promotion and disease prevention efforts are sustained and effective, ultimately reducing the burden of chronic diseases and improving overall population health.

Let’s Talk About It – Teens

This poster is intended for education professionals to promote awareness of the range of cross-curricular education resources currently available from Ora’anga Tūmanava.

Links to learning resources

• Kai no te Oraanga Meitaki: Me, Myself, My Environment
• Te Maki Toto Vene (T2): Exploring Type 2 Diabetes
• Past, Present and Future Lifestyles in the Cook Islands
• Tōku Oraanga Kōpapa: Metabolic Health Record

Downloads

This poster is available in English and is suitable for display in education staff common areas such as school staffrooms.

For printing at A2, A1 or A0 please download the ‘FULL SIZE’ version which has print marks for commercial printing. The ‘SMALL’ version does not have print marks and is suitable for A3 colour printing.

Wellbeing | Pito‘Enua

The Pacific Science for Health Literacy Project promotes a holistic model of wellbeing that encompasses complete physical, mental, spiritual and cultural wellbeing. This links to the World Health Organization’s definition of health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social health and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (WHO, 2003). Learning programmes explore these concepts, including looking at values that are essential to supporting optimal health and wellbeing in a community.

Links to learning resources

Students in the middle school (Years 7 – 10) explore perceptions of different groups within the community regarding what it means to be healthy and well. This encourages learners to identify their own thinking, as well as allowing them to explore the thinking of others regarding this concept. Learning resources support students to undertake research in their family, school, or community to explore these concepts.

Students in the senior secondary school (Year 11) add further depth by engaging in learning that examines concepts of socio-ecological determinants of health and wellbeing, and explore concepts of social inequity associated with health and wellbeing.

Health and Wellbeing Throughout the Life Course

LENScience programmes explore a life course approach to health and wellbeing, identifying that factors throughout the life course influence health and wellbeing in an ongoing manner. In particular, our programmes facilitate exploration of evidence that environmental factors experienced in early life impact health and wellbeing throughout life.

Links to learning resources

• Children Programmed for Obesity
• My First 1000 Days
• Me, Myself, My Environment: Nutrition
• Me, Myself, My Environment: Growing Up
• Feast or Famine: Understanding gene expression

The Socio-Ecological Determinants of Health and Wellbeing

The Healthy Start to Life learning programmes (including those within PSHLP) promote opportunities for young people to explore evidence about the non-communicable disease crisis from a range of perspectives. In the general media, an incorrect message about the NCD crisis that is often portrayed is that of individual blame.

The Healthy Start to Life programmes work to engage students in learning that challenges this frame of reference and promotes the concept of socio-ecological determinants of health and wellbeing. In particular, the Year 11 programmes exploring type 2 diabetes as an issue affecting communities see 15-year old students examining this concept.

Research evidence from evaluation of these programmes shows that the learning experiences promote the development of awareness of socio-ecological determinants of health and wellbeing in young people.

Who is a Scientist?

Science, like any human activity, has a culture of its own. This culture is influenced by the people and organisations that are engaging in science, and will differ from place to place.

Opportunities to examine who scientists are, what they do, and the culture of science are embedded throughout the LENScience programmes. These include narratives about scientists and their work, as well as narratives that the students create from experiences of engaging with scientists in their local setting.

Links to Learning Resources

Who is a Scientist | Meet a Scientist

Think Like a Scientist

LENScience programmes support capability development that allows adolescents to grow into adults who seek out and use scientific and health evidence in every day decision making. Central to these capabilities is understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) as well as science as a process and science as a knowledge system.

Many of the LENScience learning resources are based around narratives that explore the work of scientists involved in research associated with life course approaches to the reduction of noncommunicable disease risk in communities. Developing understanding of the nature and process of science is enhanced by exploring actual research, as well of course as allowing young people hands on experiences of undertaking scientific research. These posters support this ongoing theme throughout all LENScience programmes.

Healthy Lifestyles Series

The healthy lifestyle posters and postcards have been developed from a combination of the LENScience Healthy Start to Life learning resources and resources from partners, particularly the Cook Islands Ministries of Health and Education. Through our partnership with the Cook Islands Ministry of Health, LENScience is very grateful to the Secretariat of the Pacific Community who have supplied posters for the project from their resources.

The postcard series are of particular note, and were initially developed by the Cook Islands Ministry of Education in response to the growing need to include an all of community response to supporting improved health and wellbeing throughout life for children and adolescents. These resources have since been adapted by the Pacific Science for Health Literacy project team in Tonga and are available to download in English and or Tongan. They are designed to be postcard size, ideal for a reminder on the fridge door or family noticeboard!