Background: School-based health promotion programmes are key to improve children’s health. High levels of stakeholder participation in programme design enhance both the efficiency and sustainability of such programmes. However inter-sectoral collaboration alone, proves difficult in schools. When a health promotion programme is brought to a school, stakeholders’ participation often involves information and consultation rather than partnership or citizen control. This is particularly the case with parents, who are often involved at later stages of project design and strategic development. Among the barriers to higher levels of participation are - the differences in perception of the stakes; - the different incentives to collaborate; - the differences in conceptions of the intervention’s objective; - the different perceptions of how to define high levels of participation, what they entail and what can be expected from them.  

Purpose of the study:  We hypothesize that co-created programmes will promote higher levels of participation, hence enhance efficiency and sustainability of school-based health promotion programmes. However, no consensual definition of co-creation exists in the literature. The difference between collaboration and co-creation remains unclear. We propose to explore how school professionals define co-creation in their own health promotion practice. The purpose is (1) to outline co-creation from a bottom-up perspective, (2) identify the specific items which differentiate co-creation from other types of collaborations, in order to elaborate adequate strategies to promote the co-creation of projects.

Methods: Data collection is ongoing and is situated within the frame of the Co-Creating Welfare Project . Documents and pictures are collected during creative thinking activities with school health promotion professionals. Activities focus on their conceptions of co-creation, and their proposals to promote co-creation in programme design. Preliminary analysis shows that co-creation is a multi-dimensional construct associating various dimensions such as values, interaction processes, underlying purpose, decision-making levels, and building on differences and finding commonalities.

Conclusion: As a result, we expect to outline co-creation in school health promotion, as well as identify its specific features. We intend to pinpoint levers to promote co-creation in school health promotion project design and propose targets for further training.

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