Cross-sectional study of the French Explo’Santé 4th grader cohort: a baseline for self-efficacy, life satisfaction, life skills and health literacy

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for 74% of all deaths globally. The growing health inequities related to NCDs stem from social determinants of health (SDOH). Targeting SDOH could reduce NCDs substantially. To achieve this, implementing complex health promotion and prevention programmes in schools, including but not limited to developing life skills, seems paramount. However, the evaluation of such endeavours remains critical but challenging. To our knowledge, few complex health promotion school programmes integrating health education and environmental improvement have been evaluated. The present study is part of a French intervention-research project evaluating a three-year programme for 4th graders (ages 8-10) from schools with marked social inequalities. The aim is to develop life skills and promote healthy environments. Validated scales measuring life skills, health literacy, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction were used with 631 pupils from six pilot regions. This study presents the baseline scores for French pupils to detect early disparities and determine potential associations with SDOH, such as gender or socioeconomic status. Our results show that girls scored higher than boys on all scales except self-efficacy. Discrepancies between regions were noted, suggesting the potential need for adjustments to educational programmes to address specific regional differences in life skills outcomes. Further studies will be needed to assess the effectiveness of the programmes in other areas of its target goals.