(An item from ISHN Member information service)  A large scale study of the co-occurrence of substance use disorders and mental health disorders in Australia found that patients with a substance abuse problem were likely to have a MH problem but this correlation was not true in reverse. There was a total of 10,211,596 (4,671,243 males (45.75 per cent) and 5,540,353 females (54.25 per cent)) admissions. Over the six years, between 9.4 per cent and 12.6 per cent of the patients with MHDs were diagnosed as having SUDs. Of the patients diagnosed with SUDs, between 42.5 per cent and 57.4 per cent also had a diagnosis of MHDs. Overall, the comorbidity for both MHDs and SUDs was between 8.4 per cent and 11.3 per cent. The odds ratio for either SUDs or MHDs compared to the general population was between 13.0 to 20.8.The authors suggest that "the findings imply that different efforts towards the prevention, care and management of comorbidity may be warranted." This would likely be true even more for school-based and school-linked programs where the two conditions are much less likely to have reached a clinical stage and where convergence is also less likely. This underlines the case for not merging MH and SAP strategies related to schools while still seeking synergies wherever possible. Read More..  PS A similar analysis of US data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 10.8% had MH problems, 5.1% had SA problems and only 2.1% has co-ocurring problems

(An item from ISHN Member information service)  An article in Issue #6, 2012 of The Journal of Social Psychology examines the connections between behavioural intention to implement personal health practices and affect and cognition. Behavioural intention of personal health action plans are an important component and goal for school-based health education curricula. The authors report that: "Cognitive evaluations, affective evaluations and behavioral intentions were measured for each of 32 health-related behaviors. The timeframes of the cognitive/affective measures and the behavioral intention measure were varied between current and future timeframes creating four different conditions. Within-participants correlations between affect and intentions and cognition and intentions were calculated to determine the contribution of each factor to behavioral intention formation in the different timeframes. Results did not support the hypothesis that a shift from a reliance on affect to a reliance on cognition would occur as temporal distance increased. Within-participants analyses revealed a decrease in the contribution of cognition to behavioral intention formation when forming attitudes in the future condition". Read more..

(An item from ISHN Member information service)  An article in Issue #3, 2012 of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors introduces a new concept in the prevention kif alcohol abuse in controlled trial for college students. The authors report that The Expectancy Challenge Alcohol Literacy Curriculum (ECALC) is a single session group-delivered program designed to modify alcohol expectancy processes and reduce alcohol use among children and young adults. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ECALC in reducing risky alcohol use among heavy drinking college men. Four fraternities at a large state university were randomly assigned to receive either the single session ECALC or a control presentation (2 fraternity houses per condition, n = 250). Alcohol expectancies were assessed before and immediately after program presentation. Results demonstrated significant changes on 5 of the 7 subscales of the Comprehensive Effects of Alcohol Scale (CEOA) among students who received the ECALC when compared with control participants. Read more..

(An item from ISHN Member information service)  Earlier this month, we noted a debate about the usefulness of RCT's in real world conditions that was initiated by a leading authors of systematic reviews, Sarah Stewart-Brown. Two articles in Issue #6, 2012 of the American Psychologist continue these revolutionary thoughts. One article questions the wisdom of basing scholarship and knowledge development on an ever-increasing number of research reviews, that examine different interventions in different contexts and often clumped together in inappropriate ways. The second article suggests that rather than trying to reframe systems in the light of accumulated evidence from research, we seek to identify "disruptive innovations" such as micro-clinics in retail chain drug stores, $2 generic eyeglasses and automatic teller machines that fit into real world situations and offer practical convenience to the intended users. Read more..

187. A strategic focus on healthy living for younger people is particularly valuable. Numerous factors influence children’s social and emotional well-being, from their individual make-up and
family background to the community within which they live and society at large. As a result, a broader multiagency strategy is required, to which people themselves can contribute. A broad
range of stakeholders can be mobilized to support programmes that promote health, including generational activities. For young people, these can include policies to improve the social and
economic status of children living in disadvantaged circumstances (90,91,94,105–108); whole school approaches to school-based activities to develop and protect children’s social and
emotional well-being, including school-based health literacy programmes; peer-to-peer education; and the development of youth organizations. Integrating work on mental and sexual
health into these programmes and activities is particularly important.

(An item from ISHN Member information service)  An article in the September 2012 Issue of Educational Policy discusses how school systems both respond to new small demands while resisting large scale reforms. The article is actually a review of the 2010 book, Someone Has to Fail, which examines while many efforts to reform school systems have failed. The authors note that: "Someone Has to Fail offers a reinterpretation of the complexities of education reform, one that is full of useful counterpoints to many of the most common claims made by today’s business-minded reformers. Thus, the work is well worth reading. However, we still wish that Labaree had more deeply explored the contexts within which his education “consumers” were making their system-shaping decisions. Such an effort would have offered a more compellingly critical assessment of the importance of curriculum and the struggles over knowledge and culture. It would have brought the experiences and movements of the marginalized closer to the center of its account. And in the process, it might have engendered a somewhat less gloomy perspective regarding the roles that schools might still play in efforts to create a more just society." Read more..

(An item from ISHN Member information service)  All of the articles in Issue #3, 2012 of Irish Educational Studies address the theme of a special issue on physical education. The articles include a research review and two other articles on the role of the generalist primary school teacher and the teaching of PE as well as critical look at school self-evaluation as a means to review progress in whole school PA programs. Read More..

(An item from ISHN Member information service) A study reported in the August 2012 Issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine noted that active school transportation accounted for almost one/third of the moderate physical activity of students in a school in Bristol England. The authors report that"  Physical activity levels during journeys to and from school were highly similar, and contributed 22.2 minutes (33.7%) of total daily MVPA. In addition, MVPA on the journey did not differ between boys and girls, but because girls have lower levels of daily physical activity than boys, the journey contributed a greater proportion of their daily MVPA (35.6% vs 31.3%). Read more..

(An item from ISHN Member information service)  Two articles in Issue #4, 2012 of Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health offer insights into the role that schools can play in emergency preparedness and response. One article reports on the recent disaster in Japan, with the authors noting that Children and adolescents younger than 19 years accounted for 6.5% of the deaths, and there were 229 survivors younger than 18 years who lost both their parents in the disaster and 1295 who lost one of their parents. The long-term psychological effects on children and adolescents remain uncertain``.In ghe second article, the authors note that trained school teachers were among an effective group of temporary mental health workers. A total of 299 adults participated in the crisis intervention program, with follow-up assessments being made 4 to 6 weeks later. At the follow-up assessment, 1% of the victims had a problem and they were then referred for further medical assessment. This indicates that the intervention program in the first 2 weeks after the tsunami disaster with referrals to medical services may have helped stabilize the victims. Read more..

(An item from ISHN Member information service)  A study of the effect of teacher training of regular elementary teachers is reported in the September 2012 of Preventing Chronic Disease. Three hours of training motivated the teachers to increase the average time spent in activity with students from 2.4 minutes to 9.5 minutes and is presented as one way of achieving the goal of having children be active at least 60 minutes per day. We have identified this article as one in a series that calculates the time gained for children in activity from such regular classes, PE classes, walking to school and after school activities. Read more

(An item from ISHN Member information service)  An article in the September 2012 Issue of the Journal of School Health analyzes the submissions made to a 2009 Parliamentary Inquiry into "the opportunities for schools to become a focus for promoting healthy community living. Submissions to the Inquiry varied widely in their positions about school health promotion. The aim of this review is to analyze the submissions to identify core themes in the debates about school health promotion and how stakeholders saw schools becoming a focus for promoting healthy communities. The submissions (N = 159) were downloaded from the Inquiry website. Open coding was used to code the data. The codes were then refined into conceptual categories to create themes. The Inquiry's terms of reference were used as an organizing framework. RESULTS: Emergent themes included barriers and enablers to school health promotion including the need for stronger leadership from the Departments of Health (DoH) and Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD). CONCLUSION: Rather than supporting the idea that schools could have a wider role in communities, submissions pointed to the acute need for increased resource allocation to support health promotion in schools, and for coordinated approaches with stronger leadership from the health and education sectors. Without these structures, schools can only address health in an ad hoc manner with limited resources, capacity, and outcomes" Read more..

(An item taken from the daily/weekly/monthly ISHN Member information service)  Several articles in Issue #3, 2012 of Policy Studies Journal examine how informal social networks within and across government ministries as well as among organizations and sectors can affect policy development. Five of the articles discuss how to track the influence of these networks within systems using various statistical analysis tools. One article examines how such networks can be used in rebuilding communities after disasters and another examines inter-organizational cooperation via networks or competition during economic development programs. These informal social networks are one of the characteristics that need to be considered when pursuing systems change and sustainability.  Read more.. 

(An item taken from the daily/weekly/monthly ISHN Member information service) Five articles in Issue #3, 2012 of Evaluation & Program Planning use adopter concerns or perceptions as a lens in delving more deeply into implementation and program sustainability issues. One article examined how field based Extension educators (i.e. program staff) in four Extension services use the results of evaluations of programs that they have conducted themselves (rather than externally-based evaluations) and found that "there are few programmatic changes as a result of evaluation findings among the non-formal educators surveyed in this study. Extension educators tend to use evaluation results to persuade others about the value of their programs and learn from the evaluation process. Evaluation use is driven by accountability measures with very little program improvement use". The second article reports on site vists to research centers and found that" Decisions about how to structure site visits appear to depend on the research context, practical considerations, the level at which the review is being conducted and the intended impact of the report. Future research pertaining to the selection of site visitors, the autonomy of the visitors in data collection and report writing, and the amount and type of information provided would be particularly valuable. A third article reported that "Perceived usefulness and motivation to use were the primary reasons for junior high school teachers to use web-based e-learning systems for in-service training. The fourth article reports on public health professionals use of environmental/systems change approaches and found that (1) many partners did not feel their “regular” jobs afforded them sufficient time to do community work., (2) many partners did not feel they had the personal political power to work on broader environmental, policy, or system change issues, (3) facilitating and policy change and reaching out to non-traditional partners, like businesses, required developing a new set of public health skills and (4) the long-time frame of environmental and policy work meant that many efforts would exceed the grant period. The fifth article conducted a qualitative assessment of school staff perspectives in implementing an after-school intervention that to promote physical activity in underserved adolescents. The authors identified adopter concerns such as "(1) Logistics; (2) Essential Elements; (3) Staff and Child Challenges; (4) Staff Comprehension, Value, and Enjoyment; (5) Spill-Over Effects.  Read More..

(An item taken from the daily/weekly/monthly ISHN Member information service) A study of PE schools in four provinces in South Africa (Van Deventer, 2012) reports that the qualifications of PE teachers declined after the post-Apartheid government combined PE with a "Life Orientation" course in secondary schools. Fifty-eight per cent of LO teachers in the Senior Grades and 40% in the Further Education & Training grades who facilitated the movement component of LO were not qualified to present PE. A recent review of curricula in the three Canadian provinces that use a combined Health & PE curriculum based on stated learning outcomes estimates that the instructional time available for HPSD instruction at the secondary level varies between 17 hours and 2 hours per year. This is obviously not enough time to cover the many health and social issues as well as the health -promoting skills that secondary students need to acquire in adolescence. A recent American report on health education delivery noted and decried the fact that students in the USA reported that they received only 17 hours of sex education over their entire schooling. In other words, both PE and HPSD curricula require their own time allocations as part of the secondary curriculum for all students, Advocates for both types of education should consider such a strategy.  

(An item taken from the daily/weekly/monthly ISHN Member information service)  An article in August 2012 Issue of the International Journal for Equity in Health examines the "healthy living" strategies in tow Canadian provinces using several policy documents for the analysis. The authors report that " Initiatives active between January 1, 2006 and September 1, 2011 were found using provincial policy documents, web searches, health organization and government websites, and databases of initiatives that attempted to influence to nutrition and physical activity in order to prevent chronic diseases or improve overall health. Initiatives were reviewed, analyzed and grouped using the descriptive codes: lifestyle-based, environment-based or structure-based. Initiatives were also classified according to the mechanism by which they were administered: as direct programs (e.g. directly delivered), blueprints (or frameworks to tailor developed programs), and building blocks (resources to develop programs) 60 initiatives were identified in Ontario and 61 were identified in British Columbia. In British Columbia, 11.5 % of initiatives were structure-based. In Ontario, of 60 provincial initiatives identified, 15 % were structure-based (ie addressed social determinants). Ontario had a higher proportion of direct interventions than British Columbia for all intervention types. However, in both provinces, as the intervention became more upstream and attempted to target the social determinants of health more directly, the level of direct support for the intervention lessened. Read more..

(An item taken from the daily/weekly/monthly ISHN Member information service)  An article in Issue #8, 2012 of The International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health provides a systematic review of the impacts of water and sanitation inadequacies in the school environment. the authors report that" Forty-one peer-reviewed papers met the criteria of exploring the effects of the availability of water and/or sanitation facilities in educational establishments. Chosen studies were divided into six fields based on their specific foci: water for drinking, water for handwashing, water for drinking and handwashing, water for sanitation, sanitation for menstruation and combined water and sanitation. The studies provide evidence for an increase in water intake with increased provision of water and increased access to water facilities. Articles also report an increase in absenteeism from schools in developing countries during menses due to inadequate sanitation facilities. Lastly, there is a reported decrease in diarrheal and gastrointestinal diseases with increased access to adequate sanitation facilities in schools. Ensuring ready access to safe drinking water, and hygienic toilets that offer privacy to users has great potential to beneficially impact children’s health. Additional studies that examine the relationship between sanitation provisions in schools are needed to more adequately characterize the impact of water and sanitation on educational achievements."  Read more..

(An item taken from the daily/weekly/monthly ISHN Member information service)  Most of the discussion in school-based and school-linked human development is focused on the implementation of specific programs. When researchers, officials and policy-makers eventually realize that system capacity building is required, they too often focus solely on the school system and usually on teacher knowledge. So it is refreshing to read several articles in Issue 1-2, 2012 of Journal of Evidence-based Social Work which form part of a special Issue: Building Knowledge-Sharing Systems to Support Evidence-Informed Practice: Case Studies of “Works-in-Progress” in Public Sector Human Service Organizations. Several case studies of capacity-building in local social services agencies are presented. the topics examined include data-based decision-making, assigning senior staff to knowledge management, the development of key system performance indicators, and building organizational support for research-minded practitioners. Read more..

(An item taken from the daily/weekly/monthly ISHN Member information service)  Sarah Stewart-Brown, a prolific writer of systematic reviews has ignited a debate about the appropriateness of using Random Controlled Trials as the methodology to evaluate multi-intervention approaches and strategies that seek to modify complex, adaptive, loosely-coupled systems such as schools and public health. She argues that "Randomised controlled trials are likely to be at their best in the evaluation of interventions that do not require the active engagement and personal development of participants. The latter may depend on a series of interventions and events that potentiate each other over time. Randomised controlled trials are likely to be least valuable in evaluating universal level interventions that aim to change population norms. Because of the challenges involved in conducting RCTs in this setting they cannot be relied upon to give accurate estimates of programme effect and therefore do not deserve the privileged position that has been accorded them in the hierarchy of evidence".  For a listing of the articles in the debate, go to Issue #4, 2011 and Issue #2, 2012 of the Journal of Children's Servies.