Healthcare students’ prevention training in a sanitary service: analysis of health education interventions in schools of the Grenoble academy

BACKGROUND: The sanitary service is a mandatory prevention training programme for all French healthcare students. Students receive training and then have to design and carry out a prevention intervention with various populations. The aim of this study was to analyse the type of health education interventions carried out in schools by healthcare students from one university in order to describe the topics covered and the methods used. METHOD: The 2021–2022 sanitary service of University Grenoble Alpes involved students in maieutic, medicine, nursing, pharmacy and physiotherapy. The study focused on students who intervened in school contexts. The intervention reports written by the students were read doubly by independent evaluators. Information of interest was collected in a standardised form. RESULTS: Out of the 752 students involved in the prevention training program, 616 (82%) were assigned to 86 schools, mostly primary schools (58%), and wrote 123 reports on their interventions. Each school hosted a median of 6 students from 3 different fields of study. The interventions involved 6853 pupils aged between 3 and 18 years. The students delivered a median of 5 health prevention sessions to each pupil group and spent a median of 25 h (IQR: 19–32) working on the intervention. The themes most frequently addressed were screen use (48%), nutrition (36%), sleep (25%), harassment (20%) and personal hygiene (15%). All students used interactive teaching methods such as workshops, group games or debates that was addressed to pupils’ psychosocial (mainly cognitive and social) competences. The themes and tools used differed according to the pupils’ grade levels. CONCLUSION: This study showed the feasibility of conducting health education and prevention activities in schools by healthcare students from five professional fields who had received appropriate training. The students were involved and creative, and they were focused on developing pupils’ psychosocial competences. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-023-04235-y.