(Posted by ISHN) The ISHN information service provided to its members monitors over 200 journals, over 100 media outlets and over 100 social media accounts and posts the titles, with links, into the School Health Insider, a members only web site as well as selected Twitter accounts. In the first week of May, 2012, we identified three journal articles that provide examples of why system, organizational and professional capacity matter in implementing/operating and sustaining programs and approaches.  

• State/Provincial Leadership Matters
  
• Three articles in the May, 2012 Issue of Journal of School Health report on the effect of state level leadership in regulating school food sales, in farm to school programs and in monitoring BMI. Not surprisingly, those states that had passed laws and shown active leadership had more school districts and schools implementing those poicies and programs.
  
• Assistance, Coordination, Training Matter
  
• Two articles in Issue #3, 2012 of Preventing Chronic Disease report on the Healthy Schools program, a support to the US federal law requiring funded schools to implement nutrition and activity programs. The article on the role of the Technical Assistance component of the HSP shows that training, assistance and coordination matter in the implementation and operation of the program.
  
• Coordinators Matter
  
• An article in Issue #3, 2012 of the Health Education Journal describes the factors that facilitate and barriers towards the implementation of health education programmes in primary education schools of the prefecture of Achaia, Greece.Findings indicated that the most significant factor that facilitates the implementation of innovative health education programmes is ‘Knowledge and skills of the Health Education Officer and the teachers’. The Health Education Officer plays an important role in programme coordination by supporting, counselling, giving feedback and providing training/educational materials to teachers.

A systematic review of interventions to improve school climate in order to improve mental health found little effect. The review, published in the May 2012 issue of Pediatrics, examined nine papers reporting 5 controlled trials were reviewed, along with 30 cohort papers reporting 23 studies. Two non-randomized trials found some evidence that a supportive school environment improved student emotional health, but 3 randomized controlled trials did not. Six (20%) cohort papers examined school-level factors but found no effect. There was some evidence that individual perceptions of school connectedness and teacher support predict future emotional health. Multilevel studies showed school effects were smaller than individual-level effects. Methodological shortcomings were common. The authors of the review conclude that there is limited evidence that the school environment has a major influence on adolescent mental health, although student perceptions of teacher support and school connectedness are associated with better emotional health. More studies measuring school-level factors are needed. Randomized controlled trials evaluating 1 or 2 environmental components may have more success in establishing effective and feasible interventions compared with complex whole-school programs. Read more..

A study reported in Issue #2, 2012 of School Mental Health explored the relationship between school climate perceptions and self-reported mental health among 415 high school students. Regression analyses indicated that students’ perceptions of six dimensions of school climate (sharing of resources, order and discipline, parent involvement, school building appearance, student interpersonal relations, and student–teacher relations) accounted for a total of 15–22 % of the variance in indicators of their mental health, above and beyond between-school differences in outcomes. Parent involvement was the most consistent unique predictor of mental health. Worse perceptions of the peer interpersonal relations, equal sharing of school resources, and physical appearance of one’s school building uniquely predicted greater psychopathology (externalizing and internalizing problems, respectively). However teacher–student relations were particularly associated with wellness among girls only. Across indicators, school climate was more highly associated with girls’ mental health.  Read more...

Several articles in Issue #1, 2012 of Policy Studies Journal discuss "punctuated equilibrium", a theory of policy-making that fits very well with current ecological, complex, adaptive systems thinking about school health and social development. In previous decades, the “incrementalist” model dominated theories of policymaking. However, the “punctuated equilibrium” model, borrowed from evolutionary biology, has supplanted the incrementalist model. Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) was born of unhappiness with models that emphasized stability, rules, incremental adjustment,whereas change as oftentimes disjoint, episodic, and unpredictable. The incremental model seemed to be a beneficial approach because policymakers were operating within the reasonable range of experience, and incremental adjustments could always be reversed. PET rests solidly on a microfoundation: a model of decision makers based on bounded rationality. Bounded rationality rejects the premise of comprehensive rationality that humans tally up costs and benefits and choose the best course of action. Rather, decisions are channeled by their cognitive and emotional architectures. In particular, decision makers are prisoners to their limited attention spans, and the key governor of the allocation of attention: emotion. Media attention is fundamental to the policy process and policy change in punctuated equilibrium theory. In this literature, media attention is usually conceptualized as fomenting or contributing to shifts in attention, positive feedback, and large-scale policy change. Read more...