School health promotion – Good effort, but could do better; keep up the good work!

Abstract

There are many reasons to focus on schools as a setting to promote the health of young people, including the inter-relationship between health and education, the commitment to health and synergy between the health and education sectors, the existence of evidence to support school health promotion, and the access to large numbers of students that schools provide. There remain, however, many challenges for school health promotion, including the potential to overcrowd the curriculum, the difficulty of engaging parents and community partners, issues of school or health ownership of programs and the practical dilemmas of evaluation. It is argued that rather than being reasons to avoid work in this setting, these challenges should inform intervention and broader program design.

Evaluation of the Outreach School Garden Project: Building the capacity of two Indigenous remote school communities to integrate nutrition into the core school curriculum

“…14 Therefore, health promotion programs and strategies need to be tailored to meet the specific school population; developed in partnership; adequately resourced; and planned and supported within a restricted but adequate timeframe to have an impact. [23][24][25][26][27][28] St Leger 17 also recommends that non-classroombased initiatives are developed between the health and education sectors to assist this process.…”

“…16 They have been used to teach core academic subjects such as science, language, arts, maths and even nutrition by incorporating a hands-on learning environment. [25][26][27][28] School gardens have been documented to have a positive impact on children's food choices by improving preferences for fruit and vegetables, increasing nutrition knowledge and fruit and vegetable consumption. 23,25 School gardens are a flexible teaching tool that can be shaped by the style and goals of individual teachers.…”

“…[25][26][27][28] School gardens have been documented to have a positive impact on children's food choices by improving preferences for fruit and vegetables, increasing nutrition knowledge and fruit and vegetable consumption. 23,25 School gardens are a flexible teaching tool that can be shaped by the style and goals of individual teachers. 25,28 Teachers are not required to have knowledge of, or experience in, gardening as this can be acquired.…”

“…23,25 School gardens are a flexible teaching tool that can be shaped by the style and goals of individual teachers. 25,28 Teachers are not required to have knowledge of, or experience in, gardening as this can be acquired. 26 Realistically, integrating school gardens into the school curriculum also requires time, energy, funding and effort.…”

Translating Research to Practice

“…Glasgow, Lichtenstein, and Marcus (2003) previously asserted that external resources should be provided by researchers to enhance additional dissemination activities, thus supporting practitioners to be more willing to implement and integrate more evidence-based interventions into their practice. While Mitchell, Price, and Cass (2005) rep orted that working in partnership can build the capacity of settings through enhancing their health promotion knowledge, skills, and resources, thus potentially equipping them to better deal with other health issues.…”