(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Two articles in Issue #6, 2013 of Health Education Journal explore teacher views and ideas about health and health education. The first article compared teacher views about health in several European and African countries. The researchers found that women, older teachers, better educated, elementary and language teachers were more apt to hold positive views about health, with significant differences existing between countries. The second article examined the ideas of over 100 Italian teachers, exploring "the relationships among teachers’ health representations, their ideas about health promotion, their working conditions and their involvement in health-promotion activities at school. The results show that teachers have ambiguous health representations; however, the traditional idea of health as absence of illness was prevalent among the teachers surveyed. Regarding health-promotion activities, the teachers seemed to prefer health education programmes based on informative techniques. Some representations of health were connected to the importance that teachers attributed to health promotion and to teachers’ participation in health-promotion activities. Teachers’ working conditions appear not to be related to their involvement in health promotion." Read more>>
0 Comments
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) The protocol for a cross-border study of health ministry use of evidence-based practices in chronic disease prevention is presented in the December 2013 issue of Implementation Science. The authors state "Evidence-based public health approaches to prevent chronic diseases have been identified in recent decades and have the potential for high impact. Yet, barriers to implement prevention approaches persist as a result of multiple factors including lack of organizational support, limited resources, competing emerging priorities and crises, and limited skill among the public health workforce. The purpose of this study is to learn how best to promote the adoption of evidence based public health practice related to chronic disease prevention. This study has the potential to be innovative in several ways. This study will be among the first to provide the public health field with information about the facilitators and strategies that state level practitioners use in evidence based chronic disease prevention. Measures of dissemination among practitioners working in prevention of cancer and other chronic diseases are lacking [79-82]. This study will be among the first to develop, test, and utilize such measures. This study is among the first to apply Institutional Theory with frameworks used in public health, specifically Diffusion of Innovations and a knowledge transfer and utilization framework. The study has the potential for future large scale impact as it may identify effective ways to disseminate public health knowledge needed for EBDM processes in different contexts and help shorten the time between research evidence discovery and program application delivery." To this list of innovative aspects, we add one more. This is one of the first times that the subjects of the study are officials in health ministries, identifying their concerns, rather than focusing on front-line practitioners. At the same time, it should be noted that the specific focus of the study appears to be focused on whether the ministry officials are aware of and are using knowledge about better practices. Since knowledge exchange and transfer is only one of several system capacities required to implement and maintain quality improvements (others include coordinated policy, assignment of coordinators, formal and informal mechanisms for cooperation, ongoing work force development, regular monitoring/reporting, joint strategic issue management across systems and explicit sustainability planning), the study may or may not determine or describe the real world roles of ministry officials in promoting better practices and system change. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) "Going beyond training and hoping" is a colourful way to describe the paradigm shift now underway in research, practice and policy-making in school health promotion and social development. The words in the titles of the articles the October 2013 Issue of implementation Science are indicative of the new concepts that must be among the new, fundamentally different way that we approach our work and careers in the future. Although these concepts are applied to non-school settings and practices, their resonance should be self-evident. They include: transfer and implementation, scale-up, spread, and sustainability, making change last, leadership in complex networks, multifaceted, multilevel continuous quality improvement programs, dynamic sustainability frameworks and Social network diagnostics. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #6, 2013 of Prevention Science analyzes the implementation of the widely used Positive Behavior Intervention & Supports (PBIS) program. The researchers report that "Data from 27,689 students and 166 public primary and secondary schools across seven states included school and student demographics, indices of PBIS implementation quality, and reports of problem behaviors for any student who received an office discipline referral during the 2007–2008 school year. Results of the present study identify three key components of PBIS that many schools are failing to implement properly, three program components that were most related to lower rates of problem behavior (i.e., three “active ingredients” of PBIS), and several school characteristics that help to account for differences across schools in the quality of PBIS implementation." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) ISHN has suggested that the organizational development concept of "non-rational decision-making" should be used to understand how education, health and other systems truly operate. An article in Issue #6, 2013 of the Journal of Health Organization & Management may offer the application of a similar analytical framework. The article "explores the reasons for the sometimes seemingly irrational and dysfunctional organisational behaviour within the NHS in the UK. It seeks to provide possible answers to the persistent historical problem of intimidating and negative behaviour between staff, and the sometimes inadequate organisational responses. The aim is to develop a model to explain and increase understanding of such behaviour in the NHS. his paper is conceptual in nature based upon a systematic literature review. The concepts of organisational silence, normalised organisational corruption, and protection of image, provide some possible answers for these dysfunctional responses, as does the theory of selective moral disengagement". While the concept of "non-rational decision-making" is far less judgmental than the one discussed here, this type of analysis is necessary, rather than expecting organizations to behave logically. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Attention in mental health promotion, like other areas in school health, has turned to implementation, maintenance and sustainability issues. An article in the October 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry reports on reports on a systematic review of dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices for child and adolescent mental health. The study reported that "Of 14,247 citations initially identified, 73 articles drawn from 44 studies met inclusion criteria. The articles were classified by implementation phase (exploration, preparation, implementation, and sustainment) and specific implementation factors examined. These factors were divided into outer (i.e., system level) and inner (i.e., organizational level) contexts." The reviewers found that "Few studies used true experimental designs; most were observational. Of the many inner context factors that were examined in these studies (e.g., provider characteristics, organizational resources, leadership), fidelity monitoring and supervision had the strongest empirical evidence. Albeit the focus of fewer studies, implementation interventions focused on improving organizational climate and culture were associated with better intervention sustainment as well as child and adolescent outcomes. Outer contextual factors such as training and use of specific technologies to support intervention use were also important in facilitating the implementation process." These findings , like many others cited in our monitoring of research, support a greater focus on organizational capacity and systems change. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) We often refer to the need to have an evidence-based framework for planning and implementing health/development approaches and programs. One of these frameworks is the Concerns-based Adoption Model model that was published several years ago. An article published in Issue 33, 2013 of the Journal of Educational Administration by one of the authors of this model examines the implementation processes through this lens. "this paper introduces the three diagnostic dimensions of the CBAM) along with illustrations of how each can be used to assess extent of implementation. Highlights from the four decades of development and use of each of these constructs are presented. Each of the constructs, Stages of Concern, Levels of Use and Innovation Configurations, is described along with review of the four decade story of its measurement development. Reference is made to selected studies. Implications of each construct for research, program evaluation and facilitating change processes are highlighted." Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #2, 2013 of the Asia-Pacific Journal on Teacher Education reports on a survey of 1397 teachers in Australia, followed by interviews with 37 teachers. the authors report that one-half to two-thirds of teachers were knowledgeable and confident about selected components of mental health promotion. The authors report that "Independent judgments by staff about students’ mental health status concurred with students’ scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in about 75% of cases, indicating a good level of staff awareness about students’ mental health status. Exposure to the KidsMatter Primary mental health promotion initiative was associated with improvements in teachers’ efficacy, knowledge and pedagogy, with small to medium effect sizes. Qualitative analysis indicated that teachers’ subject-matter and pedagogical knowledge were heavily reliant on curriculum resources." Implications of these findings are discussed. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #6, 2013 of the American Journal of Public Health reports on the growing use of the RE-AIM Framework, a planning/assessment tool that measures changes in the system implementing innovations.Almost all of the 45 studies reviewed used all five elements of the assessment tool, namely Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance. It is the latter two elements that offer greater insights into capacity and sustainability issues. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #2, 2013 of School Psychology Quarterly presents the results of an APA Working Group studying the application of implementation science to school psychology. The authors report that "ncreasing attention to implementation will lead to the improvement of school psychological services and school learning environments. Key elements of implementation and implementation science are described. Four critical issues for implementation science in school psychology are presented: barriers to implementation, improving intervention fidelity and identifying core intervention components, implementation with diverse client populations, and implementation in diverse settings. What is known and what researchers need to investigate for each set of issues is addressed. A discussion of implementation science methods and measures is included. Finally, implications for research, training and practice are presented". Read more>>
|
Welcome to our
|