The aim of the project "Health Literate Schools: Organizational Development for Strengthening Health Literacy in the Setting School (HeLit-Schools)" is to adapt the organizational health literacy concept to schools in Germany.

By using a whole-of-school approach, we aim at optimizing school structures and networks in relation to health literacy. At the same time, the project also aims at strengthening health literacy in different population groups within and without school. In the mid- and long-term, this will conrtibute to sustainably strengthen personal health literacy of school-aged children and organizational health literacy of schools.

In this context, organizational development includes improving the factors and conditions necessary for strengthening health literacy in the school setting. It is planned to link this concept with the "Health Promoting School" approach, in order to integrate health literacy into existing and successfully proven concepts of school health promotion and prevention. In this context, it is also important to draw upon and include the professional and practical experience that is available in the field of school health promotion in Germany as well as to ensure that HeLit-Schools fits in well into currently existing school health promotion and prevention approaches.

Actors from school practice play a central role in the project. Together they have launched the Alliance for Health Literacy in Schools and act as a network to anchor and implement the topic of health literacy in schools in Germany. The project and the Alliance are intended to help ensure to increase the focus on merging education and health in schools. Examples from Austria, the USA and Australia currently show that this kind of thinking and action is promising and can help to address health literacy in the education sector.