Schools4Health

Project Description

We strive to introduce, strengthen and maintain an approach to health and well-being based on school-wide cooperation. The results of the project will be important for raising awareness among policy makers and for strengthening the competences of professionals and staff in schools across Europe directly involved in the project and beyond in the Health Promoting Schools (HPS) international network. Good practices that improve healthy lifestyles and health literacy and contribute to health-enhancing approaches will be highlighted.

The Consortium includes leading experts and international networks in the field of health promotion and the provision of a supportive school environment. In the eight participating EU countries, they will work together on what is needed and what can be done, including from a policy-making perspective, in order to integrate these approaches and good practices into practice within the International Healthy Schools Network. The Schools4Health project will contribute directly to this through the process of exchanging policies and practices. Around 16 schools across the EU will be involved in the process of selecting, transposing, implementing and evaluating good practices. These will focus on healthy food, physical activity and mental health.

All materials will be available on the website, including a short tool for policy makers and implementation guidelines. With an advocacy and communication campaign, we will draw attention to the results of the project. This is particularly important in the context of resilience and recovery efforts in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences. Healthy schools and other holistic approaches to school health not only guide children and adolescents towards healthier lifestyles, but also improve educational outcomes and strengthen health literacy and contribute to addressing interrelated societal challenges such as reducing inequalities, climate change and environmental degradation.

Added Value

Improving cross-sectoral cooperation (education, health, agriculture, environment) to support the functioning of healthy schools.

Supporting the exchange of good practices on the functioning of healthy schools in the context of Covid-19, the environmental crisis and increasing health inequalities.

Direct action to improve the supportive environment in schools in EU Member States in the fields of nutrition, physical activity and mental health.

Raising stakeholder awareness to get support for the Schools4HealthyLifestyles4All campaign.

Expected Results and Materials

We want to promote approaches such as HPS and expand cross-sectoral cooperation to achieve the objectives. In doing so, it will be necessary to identify how the education and health sectors, as well as the social sector and agriculture, can work more closely together to implement such approaches and provide support to this modus operandi (Work Package (WP) 1–5).

We will encourage policy-makers and practitioners to set priorities and act on the factors that enable the implementation of approaches and capacity building. We intend to explore factors and barriers (e.g. legal, financial and cross-sectoral cooperation) in participating countries and identify what can be done to seize existing opportunities and remove barriers. (WP 2, 3, 5).

We will identify good practices that promote a healthy lifestyle. We will select good practices in physical activity, healthy nutrition and mental health that improve health literacy and encourage and enable children and young people to engage in healthier lifestyles. We will integrate selected practices into the HPS approach to update and strengthen it. Good practices will be selected considering already identified barriers, e.g. staffing, time and financial constraints in schools (WP 3).

We will implement selected good practices in schools using a participatory approach. The project will involve 16 participating schools in a process in which they will select the best practices that best suit their needs. Schools will implement the selected practices and share their experiences with other schools. Tools and guidelines for the implementation of integrated approaches and good practices will be developed (WP 3, 5).

We will strengthen the contribution that HPS can contribute not only to health, but also to reducing social inequalities and improving the environment. We will find out how behavioral change can be achieved by integrating health and climate goals, and how to strengthen the “triple-beneficial/winning” outcomes of integrated health approaches to contribute at the same time to improving health, improving learning outcomes, reducing inequalities and reducing environmental degradation (WP 2, 3).

We will develop and implement an online awareness and information campaign. This campaign will target policy makers and practitioners and will promote the support and use of HPS approaches. The campaign will also promote the site of the Centre, which will be linked to the web portals of four leading international organisations (EuroHealthNet, SHE, ISCA, UNESCO Chair for Global Health and Education), presenting the findings and results of the project (WP 4).

Project Duration: 1 January 2023–31 December 2025

Supporting Organisation: EuroHealthNet ASBL

Project Partner: National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ)

Funding: EuroHealthNet