The 2015 Incheon Declaration acknowledges that education develops the skills, values and attitudes that enable people to lead healthy and fulfilled lives, make informed decisions, and respond to local and global challenges.
Education in the areas of sexual and reproductive health contributes to prevention of HIV, other STIs and promotion of healthy lifestyle and gender equality.
Information and communication technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to help children and young people develop the knowledge, attitudes, values and skills they need to grow up healthy and become proactive contributors to a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, sustainable and secure world.
UNESCO works to help Member States achieve SDG 4 Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all and SDG 3 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being targets that relate to acquisition of knowledge and skills needed for healthy and sustainable lifestyles. However, their achievement would not be possible without harnessing ICTs to strengthen education systems, improve knowledge dissemination and access to information, quality and effective learning.
Therefore, IITE’ Unit of ICT in Health Education brings together partners from government, academia and educational institutions, civil society and UN organizations, media, IT industry and engages young people in order to support Member States:
- to ensure young people’s access to ICT-enhanced comprehensive health education including HIV and sexuality education;
- to create safe, equitable and health-promoting learning environments for all members of the school community.
IITE’s Unit of ICT in Health Education works closely with UNESCO HQ’s Section for Health and Education, other sections and sectors, institutes, regional bureaux, field offices as well as with UNAIDS Secretariat and other UNAIDS’ cosponsors to maximize synergies and provide support tailored to regional and country priorities.
IITE’s Unit of ICT in Health Education:
- supports knowledge generation through research and provides technical guidance, policy advice, and advocacy;
- supports regional cooperation, experience sharing and experts networking through conferences, workshops and expert consultation;
- harnesses ICT potential for building teacher and service provider capacities to deliver health education, sensitizing parents, and raising young people awareness.
Responsible person (staff) and contact details:
- Tigran Yepoyan, Senior Project Officer for HIV, Chief of Unit, t.yepoyan@unesco.org
- Yulia Plakhutina, Project Coordinator, y.plakhutina@unesco.org
- Alexandra Ilieva, Programme Assistant, a.ilieva@unesco.org