Building Health Promoting Schools in Morocco: A Participatory Approach to Sustainable Teacher Capacity Building

Introduction – Objectives: Schools are a key setting for health promotion, but sustainable implementation requires empowered teachers and approaches adapted to local contexts. This project aims to develop an operational framework enabling Moroccan primary schools to become Health Promoting Schools (HPS) through participatory and innovative approaches. It focuses on strengthening teacher capacity, establishing sustainable teacher support mechanisms, and generating evidence to inform a national model. One Health principles are integrated as a cross-cutting dimension of the approach. Methodology: Implemented within the framework of the UNESCO Chair Global Health & Education, the project follows a participatory and iterative approach. An initial mixed-methods diagnostic combined semi-structured interviews with teachers and parents, cross-sectional surveys, SWOT analysis and triangulation to identify local needs and priorities. Findings informed the co-development of interactive educational workshops for primary school children and a teacher training programme. Workshops were developed and piloted across selected health promotion themes, including a cross-cutting One Health dimension. The teacher training programme was subsequently developed to equip teachers with practical pedagogical skills for implementing health promotion activities. In parallel, a pilot AI-supported chatbot was developed to provide evidence-based, continuous support to teachers and is currently undergoing testing.Results and Discussion: The participatory diagnostic established the local priorities and capacity-building needs that guided the subsequent development of the intervention. Teachers reported important needs for practical training and support, while parents expressed strong support for health promotion in schools. Building on these findings, the project progressed to the development and testing of interactive educational workshops for children. Pilot implementation across different health promotion themes provided evidence on their feasibility, relevance and educational value, supporting the refinement of the workshops and the development of reproducible educational materials. In parallel, a teacher training programme was developed to strengthen teachers’ practical and pedagogical capacities to implement health promotion activities in their schools. The programme is now moving into its testing phase. This teacher capacity-building component will subsequently be extended through a national training-of-trainers system, enabling trained trainers to reproduce and sustain teacher training beyond the initial pilot settings. A pilot AI-supported chatbot has also been developed and is currently being tested as a complementary mechanism for continuous, evidence-based support to teachers. Conclusions: The project is progressing from participatory diagnosis and pilot interventions towards structured teacher capacity building and sustainable support. Its ongoing consolidation will inform a national operational model, including a training-of-trainers approach for the 12 regions of Morocco, to support the sustainable implementation and scale-up of HPS in the country.