What prompted me to write this book was the time I have had to reflect following my retirement as a school principal in 2010. I previously headed a secondary school in Hong Kong, which commenced its journey towards health promotion in 2001 and has continued its search to date, though in a relatively less rigorous way. During my time in the position, I was actively involved in the Hong Kong Healthy School Award Scheme, first being a beneficiary of it, but later a contributor too. That level of involvement gave me a lot of opportunities to share my experience with health promotion in schools in local arenas as well as international forums. After leaving, I fortunately still have the privilege of continuing to promote health in schools, thanks to the invitation of Professor Albert Lee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to be vice-chairman of the steering committees for school networking projects on healthy schools, which are funded by the Quality Education Fund (QEF) of Hong Kong. Over the years, at meetings and on visits to local and overseas healthy schools, I have observed how local projects develop and how they bring in new blood for school health promotion. Through this all, I have also reflected on how a school leader can take the whole school party on the journey towards total health. Looking back, I can see successes, setbacks, and unfinished tasks on this journey, and assume all this might contribute to the knowledge base for the healthy schools movement.

Over the course of my career, I have found a dearth of literature on how to lead healthy schools. There is a great need for stories of real-life struggles to build healthy schools from scratch and of how to sustain them, as well as for a more academic investigation of the issue. I have also found Hong Kong has been doing well in school health promotion and is a strong, if not leading, voice in this part of the world. We have success stories as well as good theory-based advice to offer that may inspire schools in other regions to engage more in this worthy endeavor. Since my retirement, I have been teaching master’s courses in educational leadership and management at CUHK’s School of Education, so it feels natural for me to try to blend my understanding and practice in both domains.