(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Among the news stories this week were several items reporting on the intrusion of video cameras into schools to record student and staff behaviours. In Iowa, a school district has required school principals to wear video cameras much like the police are now doing in several cities. In Abu Dhabi and other countries, video cameras are now being used to record student behaviours on school buses. Ironically, this weeks news items included a national report from the education ministry in the US that student violence and fear of violence are declining. Read more>>
0 Comments
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A global overview of School Health Services is provided, with data from 102 countries, in Issue #4, 2015 of Health Behaviour & Policy Review. The report was led by a staff person at the WHO global office in Geneva. "The literature in PubMed and other sources were reviewed using an explicit methodology. Results : School health services exist in at least 102 countries. Usually services are provided within school premises (97 countries), by dedicated school health personnel (59 countries). Services are provided in 16 areas; the top 5 interventions include vaccinations, sexual and reproductive health education, vision screening, nutrition screening, and nutrition health education. Conclusions : Important areas such as mental health, injury and violence prevention may not be given sufficient consideration in routine service provision. We advance several recommendations for research, policy, and practice." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An analysis of coordination the Dutch Healthy School Approach (HSA) is reported in the July 2015 Issue of BMC Public Health. "HSA targets demand-driven practices based on the epidemiological data, a prioritization of needs, an assessment of important/modifiable determinants, the drafting and implementation of a multi-year plan, and its evaluation. All this is done jointly with multiple stakeholders. At school level, implementation is assisted by a ‘HPS advisor’, who represents various public services and providers in individual contacts with schools. At local and regional levels, the public health services (PHSs) function as a coordinator between the education, health and other services stakeholders. Their coordinating role derives from a legal responsibility for the implementation of local public health policy and youth health care financed by the municipality". The study "reports on the longitudinal quantitative and qualitative data resulting from a two-year trajectory (2008–2011) based on the DIagnosis of Sustainable Collaboration (DISC) model. This trajectory aimed to support regional coordinators of comprehensive school health promotion (CSHP) in systematically developing change management and project management to establish intersectoral collaboration. Multilevel analyses of quantitative data on the determinants of collaborations according to the DISC model were done, with 90 respondents (response 57 %) at pretest and 69 respondents (52 %) at posttest. Quantitative data showed major improvements in change management and project management. There were also improvements in consensus development, commitment formation, formalization of the CSHP, and alignment of policies, although organizational problems within the collaboration increased. Content analyses of qualitative data identified five main management styles. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Volume 76, 2015 of Preventive Medicine reports on a review of studies using the Reach, Efficacy/Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework to evaluate physical activity interventions aimed at youth. "A systematic search for controlled interventions conducted within the last ten years identified 50 studies that met the selection criteria. Based on Reach, Efficacy/Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance criteria, most of these studies focused on statistically significant findings and internal validity rather than on issues of external validity. Due to this lack of information, it is difficult to determine whether or not reportedly successful interventions are feasible and sustainable in an uncontrolled, real-world setting. Areas requiring further research include costs associated with recruitment and implementation, adoption rate, and representativeness of participants and settings. This review adds data to support recommendations that interventions promoting physical activity in youth should include assessment of adoption and implementation issues". Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A traditional approach to evaluating the effectiveness of school health promotion programs was used in a small scale study reported in Issue #4, 2015 of Health Promotion Practice. The authors report that "SH interventions are evidence based and integrated into the curriculum, while embedded in complementary healthy school policies and environment. This study evaluates the effects of such an intervention on Dutch high schools. Methods. Two Dutch high schools and two controls were followed to evaluate the intervention’s effects on health behaviors, body mass index, and psychosocial problems after 1 year (N = 969) and 2 years (N = 605). Outcomes were measured via self-report surveys and analyzed with mixed methods regression analyses. To complement information on intervention effects, structured interviews were held with a representative sample of teachers per intervention school to map their respective whole school approach implementation success. Results. After 2 years, one intervention school showed significant improvements: Body mass index and excessive screen time use were reduced. In the other intervention school, priority targets did not improve. These findings reflected their respective success in intervention implementation, for example, differences in intervention integration and tailoring." The challenges associated with this type of study, beyond the short term measurement of behavioural effects, is that we are no informed about why implementation worked in one school but not the other. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An education ministry funded evaluation of the effectiveness of the Taiwan Health Promoting Schools Network, the mechanism used to implement school health in that country since 2001 was summarized in the July 2015 issue of the Journal of School Health. The survey of 800 randomly selected schools found that "Respondents were most satisfied with consultants and schools' recognition of responsibilities and rules and their interactions with HPSSN administrators. They were least satisfied with the extent of their HPSSN consultant interaction and believed HPSSN provided insufficient resources to establish HPS. Respondents' consultant partnerships and satisfaction with HPSSN administration significantly predicted HPS implementation. Additionally, the predictive values of healthy policies and school-community relationships were greater than the other 6 HPS components." In other words, capacity and relationships were critical. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A number of experts were asked to refine the concept of integrated public health policy in order to move towards better ways of measuring and monitoring this idea that is central to the recent health sector attempts to promote health in all policies and the ISHN-ASCD-EI initiative on integrating health and social programs within education systems. The authors note "While expectations of integrated public health policy (IPHP) are high, assessment is hampered by the concept's ambiguity. This paper aims to clarify IPHP as first step in further measurement development. We invited 237 Dutch experts, 62 of whom generated statements on characteristics of IPHP. Next, 100 experts were invited, 24 of whom sorted the statements into piles according to their perceived similarity and rated the statements on relevance and measurability. The concept map consisted of 97 statements, grouped into 11 clusters and five themes. Core themes were ‘integration’, concerning ‘policy coherence’ and ‘organizing connections’, and ‘health’, concerning ‘positioning health’ and ‘addressing determinants’. Peripheral themes were ‘generic aspects’, ‘capacities’, and ‘goals and setting’, which respectively addressed general notions of integrated policy making, conditions for IPHP, and the variety in manifestations of IPHP. Measurability ratings were low compared to relevance." While this article is an important first step and knowing that it is always risky to comment based only on an abstract, this article raised a flag in that the issues of capacity and setting were relegated to a peripheral status. This dismissal of the real world capacities and powerful conditions based on context seems to run counter other complexity literature suggesting that working within complex environments will always require both capacity and a firm understanding of the circumstances. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #2, 2015 of Journal of Development Effectiveness examines the uphill struggle of aid effectiveness caused by the proliferation and fragmentation of aid projects. The authors suggest that " Aid fragmentation is one of the hindrances to aid effectiveness. As a main contributing factor, proliferated aids from the donor side have been pointed out. In this regard, we first examine the main factors for the donors’ proliferation and its links with the recipients’ fragmentation, which have been asked in several studies, but are revisited again with a comprehensive up-to-date data set. We also examine whether a recipient country is indeed going to get worse off through fragmented aid or, more directly, by proliferated aid. The main findings are (1) donors tend to proliferate their aid disbursement as their aid budget increases; (2) the recipients’ fragmentation is mainly due to the donors’ proliferation, and this has been prevalent since the early stage of aid history; (3) non-monotonicity is shown between aid fragmentation and growth, given that economies of scale is dominant in the incipient stage of a recipient country’s growth, but turns out to affect negatively in the long run; (4) therefore, the donors’ proliferation will eventually harm the recipients’ growth. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) School-focused research on the impact of normative beliefs on youth tobacco, alcohol and drug use has led to extensive discussions about "normative education" which focuses on transmitting beliefs about normative behaviours (eg most people do not smoke). Two articles in Issue #5, 2015 of Environment & Behavior report that even manipulated information about normative behaviours can have a positive impact on behaviours. Although both articles refer to studies of adult behaviours (use of cars for commuting and the use of bottled water), the results were the same. The participants in the two intervention groups did choose the healthier option. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Three articles in June 2015 Issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health seek to make the case for "risky" outdoor play for all children. The first article reported on a "systematic review to examine the relationship between risky outdoor play and health in children, in order to inform the debate regarding its benefits and harms. We identified and evaluated 21 relevant papers for quality using the GRADE framework. Included articles addressed the effect on health indicators and behaviours from three types of risky play, as well as risky play supportive environments. The systematic review revealed overall positive effects of risky outdoor play on a variety of health indicators and behaviours, most commonly physical activity, but also social health and behaviours, injuries, and aggression". The second review article examined "the relationship between outdoor time and: (1) physical activity, (2) cardiorespiratory fitness, (3) musculoskeletal fitness, (4) sedentary behaviour; or (5) motor skill development in children aged 3–12 years. We identified 28 relevant studies that were assessed for quality using the GRADE framework. The systematic review revealed overall positive effects of outdoor time on physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and cardiorespiratory fitness, although causality could not be assumed due to a lack of RCTs". The third article was a position paper based on the two articles. Read More>>
|
Welcome to our
|