Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Background Schools can play an important role in promoting children's health behaviours.A Dutch initiative, 'The Healthy Primary School of the Future', aims to integrate health and wellbeing into the school system.We use a contextual action-oriented research approach (CARA) to study the implementation process.Properties of CARA are its focus on contextual differences and the use of monitoring and feedback to support and evaluate the process of change.The aim of this article is to describe the use of the approach. MethodsFour schools (each with 200-300 children, aged 4-12 years) were included; all located in low socioeconomic status areas in the south of the Netherlands.Data collection methods include interviews, observations, questionnaires, and health and behavioural measurements.Research contributions include giving feedback and providing schools with a range of possibilities for additional changes.The contextual data we examine include schools' health promoting elements, practices of teachers and parents, dominating organizational issues, and characteristics of the student population; process data include the presence of potential barriers to changes.Discussion CARA is an adaptive research approach that generates knowledge and experiences on how to deal with health promotion in complex systems.We think this approach can set an example for research efforts in comparable initiatives.How does the process of change in each school evolve and which factors affect this process?The second key question aims to examine the process of change, i.e., the adoption, implementation, and integration of the HP changes, and its interaction with the school context.Since HPSF takes place in a complex system, some aspects are important to take into consideration.First, the process of change in each school may not be characterized by a linear cause-effect relationship.This non-linearity means that small changes can produce large effects at a so-called 'tipping' point [48,70].When this
Author: Bartelink
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W2989274187