The Green Paper on Aging (European Commission, 2021) recognizes that living a healthy childhood shapes our future prospects, health situation and wellbeing, and presents three key questions: How can healthy and active ageing policies be promoted from an early age and throughout the life span for everyone? How can children and young people be better equipped for the prospect of a longer life expectancy? What kind of support can the EU provides to the Member States? To contribute to answering these questions, a partnership representing the Schools for Health in Europe Network (SHE) was created to carry out the School for Health in Europe project for Active and Healthy Aging (SHE4AHA), an ERASMUS+ Project (2021-1-DK01-KA220-SCH-000032766) involving Denmark, France, Iceland, Portugal and Slovenia.

SHE has a set of materials that policy makers, school board and teachers can use to make each school a Health Promoting School.These SHE material includes the SHE School Manual 2.0 (Vilaça, Darlington, Miranda, Martinis, & Masson, 2019), the SHE Rapid Assessment Tool (Safarjan, Buijs, & Ruiter, 2013), which is an assessment of the current situation and priorities of schools regarding health promotion and education, and a set of European Standards and Indicators for Health Promoting Schools version 2.0 (Darlington, Bada, Masson, & Santos, 2021). The main aim of the SHE4AHA project is to show that the Health Promoting School (HPS) framework can be used as a validated and evidence-based contribution to implement the Commissions’ green paper on ageing that calls for solutions to support healthy and active ageing from an early age. The SHE4AHA project will develop teaching material to help schools around Europe to use and implement the SHE material.

Portugal has been a member of the European Network of Health Promoting Schools (ENHPS) since 1994, and in 2005 Health Promotion and Education (HPE) became compulsory for all schools. Currently in our country exist the following priority areas of intervention which have been worked on within the values of health promoting schools: Mental Health and Violence Prevention; Diet and Nutrition Education; Physical Activity; Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies; Affects and Sexuality Education. Portuguese school curriculum should empower students with knowledge, attitudes and values to help them to make choices and decisions appropriate to their health, and physical, social and mental wellbeing, as well as the health of those around them, giving students an active and participatory role in school-based health and wellbeing promotion (Lopes, Ladeiras, & Lima 2015). Health promotion and education, as a component of the National Strategy for Citizenship Education, is mandatory at all levels of education. To operationalize it, each school or network of schools has a multidisciplinary team for health education, including a representative of the local health unit, the school psychologist and other technicians. The coordinating teacher of this team should liaise the activities/project of HPE with the coordinating teacher of the strategy for education for citizenship of the school.

Therefore, a critical health education approach within the paradigm of health-promoting schools (e.g. Clift & Jensen, 2005; McNamara & Simovska, 2015), was used as a theoretical framework for this study.

Against this background, this study aims to investigate: i)How do teachers' conceptions about health, health determinants, health promotion and ethics in health promotion (SHE values), the setting approach, and the SHE Pillars evolve during the Course?; ii)What is the current situation and priorities of schools in relation to health promotion and education?; iii)How do the teachers who participated in the in-service training organize themselves to plan, implement and monitor health promotion processes in their schools?; iv)What are the perceptions of these teachers regarding the teaching material developed by the SHE4AHA team?

In this context, teachers from the multidisciplinary team for health of one rural network of schools, one urban preparatory school and one semi-urban preparatory and secondary school in the District of Braga, Portugal, were invited to participate in this project. The rural network of schools includes a set of schools from pre-school education to the 9th grade with over 700 students aged 6-14 years old (grades 1-9) and about 300 children from 3 to 5 years old. This network of schools has several leisure clubs and projects, such as school sports, gardening club, science and sexuality education club. The urban preparatory school has around 700 students from the 5th to the 9th grade. This school currently has the Healthy School seal and the Eco-Schools seal. The school has several clubs and projects. The semi-urban preparatory and secondary school has about 700 students from the 5th to the 12th grade (10 to 17 years old). This school has participated in several ERASMUS+ and eTwinning projects and has several clubs, such as the arts, sports, robotics and “living science”. The SHE4AHA project started with a b-learning in-service teacher training course (25 hours for the whole group and 25 hours for each school). The first 10 hours took place online . In this component, the concepts of health, health determinants, health promotion and ethics in health promotion (SHE values), the setting approach, and the SHE Pillars were co-(re)constructed. The SHE website was also explored and participants were invited to explore the Material for Teachers on Health Promotion at home in more depth. At this stage, these teachers wanted to expand the group and involve more teachers and some technicians from the school. The second phase of the training (15hours) at the University of Minho aimed to present the SHE materials, the Revised SHE School Manual, the SHE rapid assessment tool, and the SHE Standards and indicators. Subsequently, co-creation and the implementation theory of Evert Vedung will be worked on, and the planning of a strategy to promote health at school will be made. Data were collected through a focus group in each school at the beginning and at the end of the training, which included the teachers and technicians (n=15) who carried out the training, the analysis of the documents produced by the participants during the project and the analysis of collaborative logbooks constructed by each school group after each session.

Data are still being collected. However, a positive evolution during the Course in the concepts of health, health determinants, health promotion and ethics in health promotion, the setting approach, and the SHE Pillars is expected. It is also expected that the assessment of the current situation and priorities of schools in relation to health promotion and education will be done in each school collaboratively, within co-creation groups. A positive perception of the teaching material developed by the SHE4AHA team and the identification of barriers/difficulties in its use and ways in which they were overcome is still an expected result.

Darlington, E., Bada, E., Masson, J., & Santos, R. (2021). European Standards and Indicators for Health Promoting Schools version 2.0. Schools for Health in Europe Network Foundation (SHE) Ed.. https://www.schoolsforhealth.org/sites/default/files/editor/standards_and_indicators_2.pdf European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication, Green paper on ageing, Publications Office of the European Union, 2022, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2775/785789 Safarjan, E., Buijs, G., & Ruiter,S. (2013). The SHE Rapid Assessment Tool. Schools for Health in Europe Network Foundation (SHE) Ed.. https://www.schoolsforhealth.org/resources/materials-and-tools/health-promoting-school-manuals/english Vilaça, T., Darlington, E., Velasco, M.J.M, Martinis, O., & Masson, J (2019). SHE School Manual 2.0. A Methodological Guidebook to become a health promoting school. Schools for Health in Europe Network Foundation (SHE) Ed.. https://www.schoolsforhealth.org/resources/materials-and-tools/how-be-health-promoting-school