School health promotion has gained increased attention among researchers seeking to develop a safe learning environment for students and teachers (Buijs, 2009; Viig, 2012). While most studies have focused on school health implementation strategies, several studies have explored how school leadership supports health promotion in schools (Dadaczynski, 2020a; Samdal & Rowling, 2011). However, efforts to systematically review school leaders’ approaches to promote health and the impact of such approaches are still lacking. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to analyse empirical studies of the ways in which school leaders promote health in schools. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a systematic review was performed using two main databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The three main stages in the process were the identification of keywords and keyword combinations for the literature search, screening of the retrieved articles, determination of eligibility according to relevance and inclusion and review of the articles. All the articles were assessed and analysed using an integrative review technique, resulting in a final database of six eligible texts. The review of these texts resulted in three main findings: school leaders’ health has not been the focal point of research on school health promotion; as the key driver of implementing health promotion programmes in school, the perception of school leaders matters to health promotion programmes; and school leaders have found it challenging to implement health promotion programmes in schools. This systematic review expands the literature by highlighting the school leadership factors that promote school health promotion in Oceania, North America, Europe and Africa. Future systematic literature reviews could be expanded in other databases to investigate different aspects of health promotion for school leaders, given the importance of school leaders to the progress of school health promotion’.

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