Digital health goes to school: Implications of digitising children's bodies

All public health policies and interventions are an expression of competing narratives about the past, present and future. They all say something about the causes of ill health and pass explicit or implicit judgement on previous attempts to solve particular health problems. They are shaped by contemporary socio-political conditions and prioritise specific areas of concern over others. Perhaps above all else, they attempt to describe a world that is better than the one we currently live in and the path that should be followed to get there. In sum, they are never simply disinterested, evidence-driven forms of action. Much the same can be said about any educational endeavour, and particularly those that sit at the intersection between schools and public health, which is our subject in this chapter. In fact, school-based public health initiatives are worthy of scholarly attention, we will argue, precisely because of the tensions that lie behind what might seem their common-sense appeal.