Abstract
BackgroundThe need to achieve school health and promote well-being that would transcend children’s school life has been highlighted in several studies. Promotion of health and well-being of children has not been achieved despite the prescripts of the World Health Organization and national mandates.ObjectivesThe purpose of this systematic review was to explore and describe the current evidence on the dissemination and implementation of a policy on school health in public schools.MethodsFive steps of a systematic review were used to achieve the purpose of the study. The steps include framing a clear review question, developing a search approach through gathering and classifying evidence, conducting a critical appraisal, evidence summary as well as the results. Ebscohost, SAE publications, Web of Science and JSTOR databases were used to identify articles written between 2013 and 2018 and to enable access to current studies on the promotion of school health. Keywords included the following: dissemination; implementation; school health policy; and public schools. The search yielded n = 1995 articles. From this figure, 1976 articles were ineligible and only 19 articles met the inclusion criteria.ResultsSeven themes emerged from the findings of this systematic review as follows: shared information, training and development of key role-players, programme development and research, commitment from key role-players, monitoring activities, executive support and collaborative partnerships.ConclusionThe findings show that it is possible for a policy on school health to be disseminated and implemented effectively in public schools.
Highlights
Many countries such as United States of America, Australia, Somalia and South Africa have school health services covering a population of about 1.3 billion children in public elementary and secondary schools (Baltag, Pachyna & Hall 2015:270; Kolbe 2019:443)
Migraine is common and underdiagnosed amongst secondary school students in Benin City, Nigeria, and negatively impacts on the quality of life including school absenteeism (Ofvwe & Olifi 2010:1578). In all of these studies, the aims, objectives, method and population were contrary to the systematic review conducted in this study primarily because the focus of each of these studies was to highlight and provide evidence based on a particular school health service and not on the policy in its entirety
Exploration and description of current evidence on a policy on school health will assist practitioners involved in school health services to have a comprehensive directive with regard to the dissemination and implementation of a policy on school health
Summary
Many countries such as United States of America, Australia, Somalia and South Africa have school health services covering a population of about 1.3 billion children in public elementary and secondary schools (Baltag, Pachyna & Hall 2015:270; Kolbe 2019:443). Migraine is common and underdiagnosed amongst secondary school students in Benin City, Nigeria, and negatively impacts on the quality of life including school absenteeism (Ofvwe & Olifi 2010:1578). In all of these studies, the aims, objectives, method and population were contrary to the systematic review conducted in this study primarily because the focus of each of these studies was to highlight and provide evidence based on a particular school health service and not on the policy in its entirety. This systematic review focusses on current evidence on the dissemination and implementation of a policy on school health. Promotion of health and wellbeing of children has not been achieved despite the prescripts of the World Health Organization and national mandates
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