Abstract
Schools and municipalities play an important role in local health promotion. The Institute of Public Health at Rıga Stradiņš University in collaboration with the National Centre of Disease Prevention and Control carried out an online survey for studying the experiences and needs of health-promoting schools and municipalities in Latvia in implementing health promotion interventions. The aim of this study was to explore the context for developing new intervention model for a health behaviour change model within the Interreg BaltCityPrevention project “Innovative Lifestyle-Related Disease Prevention Model in the Baltic Sea Region.” Totally 112 municipalities and 100 schools within the National Health Promoting Networks were targeted. Only schools and municipalities that had previous experiences in health promotion intervention development were included in the analysis. This study showed that school-aged children were the most prevalent target group for the both schools and municipality interventions. The interventions in physical activity and nutrition used to be the most common areas for health behaviour changes. Health promotion schools and municipalities reported several significant differences in experienced difficulties and expected future needs in implementing health promotion interventions, which should be considered for increasing the capacity for better health promotion for both schools and municipalities in Latvia.
Highlights
Health promotion is the key approach for reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases by changing the lifestyles
Most (90.5%) of the studied schools (n = 57) and 82.1% (n = 32) of municipalities used specific methods for the situational assessment within the planning process of health promotion interventions. Of those having had the experience in conducting the situational assessment, the surveys using questionnaires, target groups or community meetings, and desk research were significantly (p < 0.05) more frequently reported tools for the situational assessments for both schools and municipalities
The requirement for health needs assessment was more frequently reported among municipalities (56.4%) than schools (30.2%), and the need for better political and administrative support for developing health-promotion interventions was more relevant for municipalities than for schools. This is the first published study showing some of the key characteristics of the previous practices, difficulties, and needs in planning and implementing health promotion interventions of those schools and municipalities belonging to the Health Promotion Networks in Latvia
Summary
Health promotion is the key approach for reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases by changing the lifestyles. At the local level, schools and municipalities may have a substantial potential in promoting health on both individual and community levels. C The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. The existing evidence from systematic reviews suggests that the health promotion approach implemented at schools may contribute to improving child and adolescent health and promotion of healthy lifestyle factors, such as increasing physical activity and vegetable and fruit consumption and reducing tobacco use [2,3,4,5]. The description of information on interventional elements and the implementation context in the studies is limited, causing difficulties in understanding the interventional development process and understanding the learning experience [6]
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