Purpose: The main aim of the paper is to explore whether health theatre as a school-based health promotion initiative communicates relevant health knowledge to children and the interrelated processes of identity development, knowledge acquisition and participation. Development of the definition of "health identity" was a subsidiary objective of…

Purpose: Participation is a core value for health promoting schools. Student participation at schools is often implemented in various forms of councils. The aims of this article are to summarise the effects of student participation in student councils, to show who benefits most and to discuss characteristics that make student councils effective.…

Purpose: This paper aims to review the effectiveness of a Smoke-free Homes Project in a deprived area, Salford, in the UK. The project aimed to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke within the home, chiefly amongst households with resident smokers. Design/methodology/approach: Local people from ten deprived communities were recruited as Smoke-free…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between mother-child and father-child communication and children's life satisfaction, and the moderating effect of communication with stepparents. Design/methodology/approach: Data from the 2006 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children: WHO-collaborative Study in Scotland…

Purpose: Schools are widely accepted as having the potential to make substantial contributions to promoting healthy eating habits in children and adolescents. This paper aims to present a case study from an Australian school of how a whole-school approach, planned and implemented through a health promoting school framework, can foster improved…

Purpose: The paper aims to evaluate a primary care obesity prevention intervention, targeting low-income minority parents in the USA. The first objective is to describe the barriers to behavior change experienced by families. The second objective is to understand the types of strategies that were used by the health educator to empower families to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the health-promoting and stigma-reducing effect of the German school-based programme "Crazy? So what!". Design/methodology/approach: A quasi-experimental longitudinal control-study was carried out with assessments one week prior to the school programme, immediately after it and three months later.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review two school intervention projects aiming to promote students' self-efficacy in Germany. Self-efficacy, defined as people's "beliefs in their capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments", is a core prevention criterion of mental health. It is…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to present a German adaptation of the Australian programme MindMatters for school mental health promotion in secondary schools. Design/methodology/approach: As well as other methods, the external evaluation consisted of a questionnaire-based pre-post-design (at one year interval of measurement; n=633…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether students' perceptions of their school environment and their adjustment to school are associated with health outcomes across gender and age groups. Design/methodology/approach: Data from the cross-sectional international Health Behavior in School-aged Children Survey of the year 2002…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on the evaluation of an internet-delivered stress-prevention program for adolescents as a possible alternative for school-based implementation of mental health promotion. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 904 adolescents in grades eight and nine were assigned to four treatment conditions…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to show how children's health and wellbeing are continuously influenced by violence, divorce, family transience, environmental concerns, terrorism within and outside the country's borders and, most recently, threats of and acts of war. This study investigates the perceived needs of fourth-grade elementary…

Purpose: The aims of this paper are to: briefly review the long-term or late effects of cancer diagnosis and treatment on children and youth; examine the implications of these effects on the educational needs of the child or youth; explore the implications of childhood cancer survivorship on the school, particularly for female students. Over the…

Purpose: This paper seeks to examine the way sex and relationships education programs, as part of Health Education extra curriculum activities, have been implemented in the Greek primary schools. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents and discusses data from an anonymous survey research questionnaire distributed to the 68 Elementary…

Purpose: This paper seeks to describe the design, implementation, and lessons learned from an obesity prevention pilot program delivered in a low resource school in the USA. Design/methodology/approach: A planned program evaluation was conducted to: document explicitly the process of designing and implementing the program; and assess the…