Regional projects | Northern region | PASSE programme

PASSE Programme – Healthy Eating in School Health Programme, is a multidisciplinary programme, sponsored by the Northern Regional Health Administration, integrated in the field of Health Promotion and Protection of the Public Health Department’s Health Planning Unit.

This programme aims to promote healthy eating patterns using different approaches, such as decision making and healthy alternatives, and was developed in partnership with the Northern Regional Directorate of Education.

This programme is targeted at the school community with the aim of helping students make healthy choices as well as making sure schools offer a health-promoting diet and that the curriculum helps promote healthy eating.

This programme was planned based on the five dimensions of the health promoting schools’ network: organizational, curricular, community-based, psycho-social and ecological. It targets not only the organization itself, but also its food supply and policies. It proposes a set of activities from kindergarten to 4th grade fitted to their curriculum. For 3rd grade students, there is a specific set of sessions in the field of health psychology. It aims to create health promoting environments, by bringing together the community and local and regional health teams. It also promotes personal development, the involvement of the school community and the use of active methodology throughout all levels of intervention.

Regional PASSE teams are responsible for training local PASSE health teams, according to an active and dynamic work methodology, so that they can manage the programme in their geographic school area.

Once in place, local PASSE teams will be responsible for training teachers who wish to implement the programme in their schools, as well as for training/raising awareness of those handling food.

Regional PASSE team is composed of: Dr. Débora Cláudio (Dietitian), Dr. Nuno Pereira de Sousa (Public Health Physician) current PASSE manager, Dr. Rui Tinoco (Psychologist). Until late 2009, Dr. Ângela Menezes (Public Health Physician) was also part of the PASSE team, as well as its manager.

Different manuals and materials were developed to support the programme’s activity.