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Mental health promotion can learn from achievements in the field of health education and promotion. Health education and promotion has seen four major developments in the last decades: the need for planning, the need for evaluation, the behaviour‐environment issue, and the use of theory. A recently presented protocol for developing theory‐based and evidence‐based interventions, Intervention Mapping, is described here in more detail. Implementation is prominent in planning models and intervention protocols. The same expertise and professionalism that we put into the development of health promotion interventions for our target groups should be put into implementation interventions for programme users and decision‐makers.

This paper seeks to discuss the rationale of the newly reformed health education curriculum in Cyprus, which aspires to enable not only teachers, but also all the school personnel, to work from the perspective of health promotion. It is a curriculum which moves from the traditional approach of health education focusing on individual lifestyle/behaviour modification into approaches that recognise and tackle the determinants of health.

The paper critically discusses the structure and the content of the learning objectives of this curriculum that encourages teachers to work in a health promoting way.

The central goal of this curriculum is to enable students and schools to act as health agents, addressing the structural determinants of health and promoting environmental changes. The optimum level for all topics of the curriculum is achieved through learning objectives, which concern three interconnected levels. These are: “investigating determinants of health”, “practising action competency skills for health” and “achieving changes in favour of health”. All levels are means as well as end products in terms of the curriculum objectives.

The outcome of the development of the health education curriculum acts as a guide for school interventions, through a methodological framework, which encourages participants to identify and promote environmental changes that facilitate healthy choices. This is of significance to those working in the field of health promotion and who seek to establish a new language of health promotion that goes beyond the pervasive discourse of individual lifestyles.

The implementation of the particular health education curriculum will promote not only health in the school community but also in the local community. This is because a key principle which underlies the curriculum is the involvement of the students, school staff, family and community in everyday health promotion practice. It also promotes the development of partnerships among them.

This is an innovative curriculum for Cyprus, based on health promotion and health education principles, but at the same time taking in account the local socio‐cultural and political perspective. This curriculum may be applicable to other European countries.

The editorial aims to provide a brief overview of the individual contributions to the special issue, and a commentary positioning the contributions within research relating to the health‐promoting schools initiative in Europe.

The members of the Schools for Health in Europe Research Group were invited to submit their work addressing processes and outcomes in school health promotion to this special issue of Health Education. Additionally, an open call for papers was published on the Health Education web site. Following the traditional double blind peer review process, nine submissions were accepted for publication. Five of these are selected to be published in this issue and the rest will be published in a future issue of the journal.

The five articles in this issue take a comprehensive approach to health promotion in schools and reflect on the related processes and outcomes. Although diverse in focus and research methodology, the five contributions all emphasise that the question about the outcomes of the health‐promoting schools cannot, and should not be limited to narrowly defined health outcomes achieved through single health‐promotion interventions. Directly or indirectly the articles reiterate the idea that health promotion in schools needs to be linked with the core task of the school – education, and to the values inherent to education, such as inclusion, democracy, participation and influence, critical literacy and action competence in relation to health.

This special issue endorses the idea that health promotion in schools would do well to reconnect with the traditions of educational theory and to develop innovative forms of educational practices and interventions in the face of complex societal challenges concerning health and health promotion. It can be beneficial for stakeholders who work towards school based health promotion, assisting them in bridging the gap between health and education sector.

Health and education are inextricably linked. Health promotion sits somewhat uncomfortably within schools, often remaining a marginal aspect of teachers’ work. The purpose of this paper is to examine the compatibility of an HP-initiative with teacher professional identity.

A qualitative research design was adopted consisting of semi-structured interviews. In total, 49 teachers in two school districts in the Auvergne region in central France were interviewed in depth post having completed three years’ involvement in a health promoting schools initiative called “Learning to Live Better Together” (“Apprendre a Mieux Vivre Ensemble”).

Teachers in the study had a broad conceptualisation of their role in health promotion. In keeping with international trends, there was more success at classroom than at whole school level. While generally teachers can be reluctant to engage with health promotion, the teachers in this study identified having little difficulty in understanding their professional identity as health promoters and identified strong compatibility with the HP-initiative.

Teachers generally viewed professional development in health promotion in a positive light when its underlying values were commensurate with their own and when the context was seen as compatible with the school mission. The promotion of health in schools needs to be sensitive to professional identity and be tailored specifically to blend more successfully with current teacher identity and practice.

The promotion of health in schools needs to be sensitive to professional identity and be tailored specifically to blend more successfully with current teacher identity and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how professional cultures in schools and school systems could improve the well-being of students, with a particular emphasis on teacher-health partnerships, which would not naturally occur without a specific intentional intervention. Implemented with a whole-school approach, the Health Promoting School (HPS) is one of the most effective intentional interventions to achieve improvements in both the health and educational outcomes of students through the engagement of key stakeholders in education and health to create a healthy physical/psycho-social environment. This paper emphasizes collaboration and the building of professional cultures in schools that share collective responsibility for the whole student.

Student outcomes in schools should include both academic and health and well-being outcomes that promote positive pathways throughout adulthood. This paper connects HPS research with policy analysis drawing on Hong Kong’s unique context as being at the top of the PISA rankings and striving toward a positive health culture and well-being in its schools.

Evidence has been gathered extensively about what schools actually do in health promotion using the HPS framework. The HPS framework has served to assist schools and authorities to concentrate on the gaps and affirm best practices. This paper also reports how teachers have created a professional and collegial community with health partners to address outbreaks of infectious diseases in schools and obesity in students.

The concept of HPS can serve as an ecological model to promote the positive health and well-being of students, fostering their personal growth and development, and as an alternate model for school improvement.

This paper has highlighted that structured school health programs such as HPS could have positive effects on educational outcomes, while also changing professional cultures and communities in schools with an emphasis on students’ physical health, emotional health, social health, or spiritual health. The Assessment Program for Affective and Social Outcomes is used as a tool by schools in Hong Kong, reflecting the affective and social developments of the students in the school under review as a whole, and how they relate to the school. It resembles the core areas of action competencies, and school social environment; the two key areas of HPS.

Hong Kong is often analyzed from an educational rankings perspective. However, it offers broader lessons on educational change, as it has in recent years emphasized dual goals in student outcomes and professional communities – the importance of whole student health and well-being as a both a precursor and key component to the educational outcomes schools seek. Globally, very few schools are able to implement HPS in its entirety. Continuing development of HPS in Hong Kong would add value to international literature in terms of which types of data would influence adoption of HPS in which types of school and policy contexts.

School health promotion is said to be most effective when implemented through a comprehensive, settings‐based, whole‐school approach. The purpose of this paper is to address the current lack of knowledge about the current state of teacher education for health promotion and its potential to further the development of settings‐based approaches.

This paper focuses on an analysis of initial teacher education for school health promotion in Austria by studying the curricula of the Universities of Teacher Education, as well as interviewing representatives from these institutions. A content analysis of the identified modules and a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts were conducted.

While there is more behaviour orientation than setting orientation identified in the curricula, the interviewees showed a broad understanding of health promotion that encompasses a settings view. The situation at the Universities of Teacher Education mirrors the situation in schools: there are similar supporting and hindering factors for the implementation of healthy settings.

A greater degree of focus in teacher education on the settings approach and the promotion of the skills required to implement it is needed, as well as the creation of health‐promoting Universities of Teacher Education.

The study makes recommendations about how to prepare future teachers to support the development of more effective approaches of school health promotion.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a curriculum change in the provision of health promotion in pre‐service teacher education in a one‐year postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) secondary course in one Higher Education Institution (HEI) in England.

The paper describes the iterative development process, from an initial survey and mapping of the existing pre‐service teacher training programme, which provided an evidence base for the piloting of a new health promotion component in the curriculum, and its subsequent evaluation. Changes to the health promotion element of the curriculum reflect the programme philosophy which balances the requirements of a competency based curriculum with a more liberal approach to education and training in which pre‐service teachers are expected to critically reflect on, and evaluate their practice. This work adopts a socio‐constructivist approach to teacher education, in which teachers develop their knowledge, skills and attitudes by interacting with others through dialogue, and learning from more knowledgeable others in a cooperative and scaffolded manner.

The paper presents the results of these changes and discusses implications for their sustainability. The changes made to the health promotion component of the programme and their implementation would not have been possible without the inter‐professional collaboration that took place over three years.

To the authors’ knowledge similar work involving a multi‐disciplinary collaborative approach to the development of a health education component of a pre‐service teacher education curriculum has not been employed or reported.

The purpose of this paper is to understand early career teachers’ perceptions of the impact of a pre-service health education programme on their health promotion practice in schools and the contextual factors that influence this.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 primary and secondary trainee and qualified teachers who had trained at a university in England. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

The teachers found the training to be a useful introduction, particularly when it was relevant to their practice. They valued gaining practical skills at university, on placement and in school once qualified. They reported that witnessing pupils’ lives in school had increased their awareness that health education is important. Their personal qualities, life experience, the school’s ethos and competing pressures influenced their practice. Teachers considered that building relationships with colleagues, pupils and parents facilitated health promotion, and that health education needs to be relevant to pupils. Some teachers expressed that teaching about health could be a “minefield”. They also discussed whether schools or parents are responsible for educating pupils about health issues and the place of health promotion within education’s wider purpose.

Few studies have followed-up trainee teachers once they are in teaching posts to explore the longer-term perceived impact of pre-service health education training. The findings suggest that teachers’ development takes place via an interaction between training and practice, suggesting that training could particularly aim to provide teachers with a contextualised understanding of health issues and practical experience.

Recent decades have shown a great increase in online and blended learning and teaching practices in higher education. The purpose of this book chapter is to explore and assess the existing literature on best practices in online and hybrid teaching and learning in the field of health education/promotion. Additionally, emerging practices Post-COVID-19 related to online and hybrid teaching as applicable to the field of health education/promotion were also explored.

In order to collect the materials for the study, a Boolean search of CINAHL, MEDLINE, and ERIC, Education Research Complete databases was carried out using the terms and headings such as “online teaching,” “hybrid teaching,” “health education,” “health promotion,” and “public health” for the time period 2010–2020. The criteria for inclusion of the studies were: (1) publication in English language, (2) full-text peer-reviewed publications between 2010 and 2020, and (3) location of studies anywhere in the world Exclusion criteria were publications in languages other than English and studies published prior to 2010. Using the key terms “online teaching” and “public health” yielded 10 results and “online teaching” and “health education” yielded 19 results. This review highlighted the scant published literature (as gauged by studies published in the last decade) on efficacy and application of online and hybrid teaching and learning in the field of health education/promotion.

We encourage health education professionals to conduct experimental and quasi-experimental studies for assessing efficacy of online and hybrid teaching and learning particularly using evidence-based frameworks such as Quality Matters (QM) or Online Learning Consortium (OLC) quality scorecard as mentioned earlier.