Schools4Health – Innovating health and education
“Because children and youth who feel better, do better.”

Date: 31 January 2024

Venue: Hermann Teirlinck building, Tour & Taxi, Brussels, Belgium

SEMINAR PROGRAMME
Opening session and introductory remarks
Video Welcome - Minister Hilde Crevits
Keynote on Health as an Educational Resource - Kevin Dadaczynski
Setting the scene: what is needed to invest in health promoting school approaches in the context of our fast-changing societies?
EU Policies that Support Health Promoting Schools (European Commission, DG SANTE)
Pathways to School Success (European Commission, DG EAC)
Making Every School a Health-Promoting School (WHO)
Video Message - Tigran Yepoyan (UNESCO)
Health Promotion at School in Spain (Spanish Government)
Policy contexts for health promoting schools
The Schools4Health Project (EuroHealthNet)
Panel 1: Strengthening Health Promoting Approaches and Scaling Up Through Policy (Schools4Health Partners from Romania, Riga, Greece, Hungary)
Panel 2: Improving Health Promoting Approaches and Doing Better Through Policy (Schools4Health Partners from Flanders, the Netherlands, Andalusia, Slovenia)
Parallel session 1: Creating healthy environments in and around schools, with a focus on healthy nutrition and physical activity
SLOfit and FitBack Fitness Monitoring Tools in Schools (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Sport)
SchoolFood4Change Whole School Food Approach (ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability)
Parallel session 2: Mental health in schools, promoting mental wellbeing among students and teachers
The MindMatters Programme: Developing Good Schools with Mental Health (Leuphana University, Center of Applied Health Sciences)
Building Social and Emotional Skills to BOOST Mental Health Resilience in Children and Young People in Europe (EUREGHA)
Building Social and Emotional Skills to BOOST Mental Health Resilience in Children and Young People in Europe (EUREGHA)
Working Together and Identifying Opportunities for Collaboration on the Health Promoting School Approach
Video Message - Chris Wright (Youth Sports Trust, Well Schools)
Meaningful Participation of Pupils and Students in Health Promoting School Approaches and Policies (EuroChild)
Creating Health Food Environments in and Around Schools (Sciensano)
The EU School Scheme (European Commission, DG AGRI)
The L4WB Framework (Learning for Well-Being Foundation)
The Schools for Health in Europe Network Foundation (SHE)

Schools play an increasingly important role in shaping children and youth's academic, physical, mental, and social development, with lasting impacts across their life course.

Investments in state-of-the-art health promoting school approaches are a key entry point to cultivating healthier educational and social environments. The WHO defines a health promoting school as one which “is constantly strengthening its capacity as a healthy setting for living, learning and working”. Such approaches not only enable students to develop good habits around nutrition, physical activity, and mental health, but are also part of the solution to interrelated societal challenges such as social inequity and climate change.

This is the ethos of the Schools4Health initiative (2023-2025), led by EuroHealthNet and funded under the EU4Health programme. Against this background, the seminar will explore how different stakeholders in policy and practice, across levels of governance and sectors, can work better together to optimise the contribution that schools can make to the health and wellbeing of students, the school community as well as the wider communities that they are in.

The purpose of the seminar is to:

  • Gather experts, policy makers and other key stakeholders to convey the critical need to invest in health promoting school approaches and create enabling policy conditions for health promoting schools;
  • Spotlight country-level policies on health promotion in schools, presenting key policy insights from Schools4Health partners in Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia and Spain;
  • Make links to the broader EU policy context and identify key tools which can be applied to mobilise health promoting approaches in and around schools;
  • Explore the state of the art in multistakeholder involvement and identify opportunities for collaboration to create healthier schools.

"Project is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). Neither the European Union nor HaDEA can be held responsible for them."