Promoting positive youth development through school-based programmes

Most school health promotion programmes for adolescents have tried to prevent risk behaviours, such as violence or substance abuse, using an approach based on a deficit model of adolescent's health and development. Recently this model has been questioned by new approaches that emphasise competence and positive youth development, and consider school as a suitable context for the implementation of health promotion programmes. This paper reviews the international contemporary literature on school-based programmes as a resource to promote youth development. We focus on different topics such as particular characteristics of effective curricular programmes, and the participant's positive outcomes. To conclude, we present a few questions that are still without answers and future research guidelines for intervention in the Spanish context.