Development of an emotional nutrition education programme for school children in Lorca

Introduction: Promoting healthy habits during school age is fundamental to promote a healthy life in the medium and long term, with emotional nutrition, sleep, and family and advertising influences becoming increasingly important. Objectives: To implement an ongoing emotional nutrition education programme in a school in Lorca, Murcia, where schoolchildren receive different workshops each year on health, physical education, emotional education and nutrition, sleep and rest and care for the environment. Methods: A guide to the activities and the courses to which each activity corresponded was drawn up. Everything was developed by health professionals specialising in the subject, and was presented to the teaching staff. A continuous training plan was established through a healthy week in which the same workshops could be repeated every year in the same courses, thus ensuring that the children would receive continuous annual training. The programme includes activities for all 700 children in the school according to year group and age. Results: The result of the present study shows how the healthy week programme has been perfectly implemented in the school, being this year 2022 the VIII edition, being awaited by both pupils and teachers. The children of the school showed an increasing adherence to the Mediterranean diet, participating in most of the local and regional sports activities, being considered one of the most active schools in the city. Conclusions: There is a need to invest in ongoing training programmes established with health specialists within the schools in order to achieve improvements in children's health.