This page explains how the topics being discussed in this program are identified and described.

This encyclopedia and knowledge exchange program is covering a wide variety of health, safety and social development topics as well as a number of school-based and school-linked approaches, programs and strategies. Eventually, we hope to cover over 400 topics with a series of summaries (glossary terms, encyclopedia entries, handbook sections and bibliographies). So, we are have tried to develop a method for describing those topics in a consistent manner, recognizing the wide variations in the uses of terms around the world and across several disciplines.

The many topics that are addressed in this program are identified through the accumulated experience of the many professionals engaged in this process, the published research and practice-based publications from the arenas of health promotion, education, safety/crime prevention and social/economic development. We recognize that there are many different ways that these topics can be named, described and grouped. We are doing our best to accommodate many different uses of the same terms.

The topics that relate to interventions (I) and strategies (S) are categorized with terms such as approaches (A), strategies (S), interventions (I) and organizational capacities (OC).

There is a specific category called "school (based or linked) multi-intervention plans" (SMIP's) such as Health Promoting Schools, Safe Schools, Community Schools, Social & Emotional Learning, School Nutrition & Health Programs, Coordinated School Health Programs, Inclusive Schools and Comprehensive School Health approaches and more. These SMIP's are models that have been developed and include a rationale, usually include different iterations based on experiences in different parts of the world and include multiple interventions delivered in a coordinated manner. Often, these models are published in the form of guidelines, planning guides or checklists.

We have also included Consensus Statements (St) which are quite similar to multi-intervention models (SMIP's) but are actually calls for action or statements of principles. They often call for action at different levels or on a set of issues or for a specific context or population.

The topics also include behaviours (B), knowledge/attitudes/skills (KAS) and health or physical conditions (HPC). When we describe these topics, we provide a brief overview of the problem, risk or protective condition and also have a brief description of how the physical and social environment of the school influences or interacts with the behaviour or condition.