Open Sky School: Effectiveness of an intervention program involving nature to mitigate the impacts of school disruptions linked to Covid-19 on the mental health and healthy lifestyles of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Google translate: How to reduce the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of disadvantaged children, who have been hardest hit? We offer Open Sky School, an outdoor education intervention involving contact with nature. There is currently a craze for outdoor education in schools and especially since the pandemic. Could such practices have salutogenic effects? Experimental studies conducted all over the world show that contact with nature (urban park or forest) improves mental health. Preliminary results seem to indicate that this is also the case in children who are in contact with nature during outdoor learning situations. However, no experimental studies have tested the effectiveness of outdoor education as a strategy for improving children's mental health. We will conduct a cluster randomized control trial to test the effectiveness of the Ecole à Ciel Ouvert program. It is a nature-based, teacher-implemented mental health promotion intervention. The intervention will be spread over 15 weeks, at the rate of two hours per week. We will recruit 80 schools with 5th year primary school classes from underprivileged neighborhoods, among the schools that are already participating in a larger study conducted by the Observatory for Children's Education and Health (OPES). The intervention will include activities that promote mental health in nature (eg cooperation, compassion/empathy, mindfulness) and educational activities. We will assess the impact of the intervention on children's health. The results could help decision-makers to implement an outdoor education program promoting mental health, based on empirical evidence, and having a high potential for deployment at the population level, and this, at low cost.]