Author Identifier

Valeria Varea: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3572-4976

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Health Education Research

Volume

40

Issue

3

PubMed ID

40249673

Publisher

Oxford Academic

School

School of Education

RAS ID

78834

Funders

Swedish Research Council (2020–03309)

Comments

Barker, D., Caldeborg, A., Quennerstedt, M., & Varea, V. (2025). How young migrants perceive school health education in Sweden. Health Education Research, 40(3), cyaf012. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyaf012

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide insights into how young people who have been forced to migrate perceive school health education. Eighteen individuals aged 15–19 years (10 females, 8 males, average age 16.9 years) took part in either focus group interviews (n = 7) or individual interviews (n = 1). Participants were first presented with short scenarios concerning health education and were invited to use these scenarios as starting points to discuss their own experiences of health education. Participants were then presented with a collection of photographs that portrayed people displaying broad dimensions of health. Participants were asked to discuss the significance of the health dimensions in their lives, and describe how these dimensions were covered in school health education. Our findings suggest three broad perceptions of health education content: a moderately enthusiastic perception, a disengaged perception, and a marginalized perception. These findings: raise questions about whether the provision of health education matches the needs of young migrants, point to cultural differences in the way health topics are understood, and suggest that school health education might influence how migrants interact with health service providers.

DOI

10.1093/her/cyaf012

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Share

 
COinS