What if disease prevention could start with a textbook?
In October, the South West Ethiopia Peoples’ Region (SWEPR) took a major step toward making that vision real. Hygiene and sanitation messages co-developed by NALA were officially integrated into the regional Amharic curriculum. That means more than 1,500 primary schools across six regions are now using these health messages in textbooks and teacher guides, reaching every year half a million students from grades that had never covered health topics before.
For the first time, health messages are not taught in a separate class, but woven into core subjects like literacy, for instance. In one lesson, a story about friendship becomes a discussion about handwashing. In another, students practice grammar by writing sentences about safe water. Health becomes part of how children read, think, and make sense of the world around them. That is where habits start. And that is where prevention begins.
This is more than a curriculum update. It is a long-term shift. Because these lessons are part of the official curriculum, they require no extra class time, no additional training, and no ongoing external resources to sustain. In Ethiopia, curricula are typically revised only once every decade. That means this change will shape how hundreds of thousands of children understand hygiene and disease prevention for years to come.
This achievement was not led by NALA. It was driven by the South West Region Education Bureau, whose experts invested months of focused work into shaping and delivering the integration. Curriculum specialists, educators, and regional leaders worked side by side to adapt content, align policies, and embed messages in a way that felt both authentic and sustainable.
It is also a proof of concept. It shows that when communities help shape health education from the start, the result is something governments can adopt, own, and scale. NALA supported this process from the inside by conducting assessments, forming the review committee, and helping translate lived realities into lessons that fit how children learn.
Health education doesn’t work when it is an afterthought. It works when it is part of the system. When children learn early how to stay healthy, care for each other, and apply that knowledge in daily life, it changes what’s possible not just for them but for their families and communities.