The application of salutogenesis in schools

Abstract

The chapter compares the salutogenic orientation with the health promoting school approach and comparisons are made with regard to key concepts and principles of the two approaches to children’s health. A brief literature overview compares the usage of salutogenic concepts to the usage of overlapping concepts, such as self-efficacy, resilience and health literacy in relation to school health. Furthermore, main findings indicating links between schools and young people’s sense of coherence are presented. Finally, a number of projects using the health promoting school approach are described as examples of major interventions in the field and the evidence on health and behavioural outcomes are summarized. The main conclusion is that a closer merging of the salutogenic orientation and the health promoting school development is fruitful as the former has the potential to enrich the health promoting school development with an overall philosophy, and that intervention studies based on the health promoting school model have the potential to strengthen the intervention dimension of a salutogenic approach in schools.