7. Health and Well-Being
Initiatives for health and well-being of young people have been coordinated at national level by the Ministry of Youth and Sports (until December 2021), the Ministry of Sports (established in January 2022 as the result of the reorganisation of the Ministry of Youth and Sports and functioning until July 2023), the National Agency for Sport (established in July 2023), the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. While this ensures the existence of a large number of strategic and policy documents, the coordination in the field of health and well-being of young people is not generalised and it is still done on specialised policy fields. For instance, within the framework of the Strategy for the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents for 2016-2020 the actions have been coordinated only concerning mental health.
Sport and physical activities for young people are promoted by the Sports for All Programme of the National Agency for Sport. The programme is granted to the National Federation of Sports for All and it was launched in 1998. A Multiannual Plan for Health and Health Education have been developed in 2016 by the Ministry of Health and the Presidential Administration, covering the period 2016-2020. The Multiannual Plan included as the first activity the development of the legal framework for planning and managing national initiatives in the field of health promotion and health education, this field being decentralised at the moment in Romania. As a result, the Law no. 152/2020 on health promotion and disease prevention was adopted.
According to Law no. 272/2004 on the Protection and Promotion of Child Rights, article 46, life education, including sex education shall be provided in schools. However, health education is an optional subject that can be chosen by the schools as a separate subject, usually taught by professors of biology or other related mandatory disciplines.