The opening plenary of 9th Global Conference on Health Promotion got underway in Shanghai on Nov 21, prompting high-level panel discussions on how to make bold political choices for health in the face of other interests.

Hao Ping, China's vice minister of education, shared four ways in which health promotion work can be carried out within the school education system:

Firstly, Schools should optimize their course design by adding more physical exercise classes.

Secondly, the country should promote school health education.

Thirdly, schools should undergo sports reforms to stimulate innovation, particularly in regards to campus football.

Fourthly, an emphasis should be placed on enhancing the coordination between finance, health and other departments that carry out the cross sectoral action in disease prevention, nutrition, food and drinking water safety and other aspects.

Hao noted that in the past few years, China has made significant progress in health promotion work in school education.

This is part and parcel of China's Healthy China 2030, which is a general guideline document for promoting people's health in the coming 15 years.

The Chinese government invested 159.1 billion yuan into a nutrition project in 1,504 Chinese counties, which has so far benefited more than 33.54 million students, according to official statistics.

However, the Chinese education system still faces ongoing challenges as the development among the whole country is diverse by regions, said Hao. 

Moreover, there is much room for improvement in terms of the general health of the country, says Hao, such as the issue of lack of exercise and sleep, rising obesity rates, myopia and other issues.

Hao outlined the three main aspects that the Chinese education department approaches the Healthy China 2030 plan from:

The first is to continue to integrate health education policy throughout education reforms, adopt health education into the national education system, take all stages of education as an important content of quality education and constantly optimize the country's health promotion and education mode.

The second aspect is to promote reform and innovation of sports among schools to meet the diversified needs of students and pay attention to the cultivation of students' sports interest and skills, in the hope of developing a lifelong habit of exercise in students.

The third major approach is to proceed to carry out cross sectoral action in the field of school health promotion and actively cooperate with the international community in exchanges and cooperation.

Also participating in the plenary were Pirkko Mattila, minister of social affairs and health in Finland; Veronika Skvortsova, minister of healthcare in the Russian Federation; Noriko Furuya, state minister of health, labour and welfare in Japan; Ilona Kickbusch, adjunct professor at the graduate institute of international and development studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, in his opening address at the conference, said that health should become an essential part of the national strategy. State leaders and local leaders should honor their commitments to make health part of the political choice and facing up to the challenge caused by some business interests, according to Kickbusch.