The Health Promoting School (HPS) is an educational model that promotes students' health literacy through creating a healthy environment and building internal capacities. Since its pilot implementation in 1995, China has still faced structural challenges such as low policy execution efficiency and the lack of a family-school-community collaboration mechanism. In contrast, the forward-looking governance framework and practical validation advantages of the European Standards for Health Promoting Schools (ESHPS) offer valuable references. Based on this, the study aims to interpret and analyze the European HPS standards and provide targeted insights to guide the development of Health Promoting Schools with Chinese characteristics and advance health education. The study employs literature review and logical analysis methods to interpret and analyze ESHPS and provides targeted insights for the development of Health Promoting Schools in China. The ESHPS is based on a three-dimensional framework of inputs, process interventions, and outcomes, facilitating effective mechanisms to enhance health literacy through dynamic collaboration across four levels: policy, schools, communities, and students. Its dynamic governance logic builds an operational system through democratic consultation, community empowerment, and other strategies. Although China’s standards rely on quantitative indicators for pilot promotion, challenges remain, such as outdated standards and a lack of policy coordination. Therefore, China needs to optimize Health Promoting Schools by improving standards, ensuring standardized construction, promoting integrated family-school-community participation, and enhancing the professional development of health education teachers. Conclusions/Discussion: The analysis of ESHPS essentially aims to promote local standard innovation by drawing on successful foreign experiences. However, there is a gap in institutional adaptation when transplanting such experiences, and the development of health-promoting school standards is not only a matter of policy implementation but also involves the transformation of educational concepts and social culture. Future research should focus on exploring the causal relationships between the outcomes of foreign experiences, based on an understanding of the successful experiences of developed countries, as well as how to achieve the localization and innovative transformation of international experiences in the present context. By coupling the advantages of foreign paradigms with local governance contexts and achieving a shift from "compliance with standards" to a "quality-oriented paradigm" based on cultural subjectivity, a Chinese solution that integrates scientific and humanistic aspects can ultimately be formed.
Yang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.