Working with schools to develop complex interventions for public health improvement

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways in which researchers can work collaboratively with schools to develop complex interventions designed to improve public health. It summarises the importance of young people’s health, and the importance of schools as a setting for health improvement. The chapter presents the increasing emphasis being placed on working collaboratively with schools to co-produce new health improvement interventions. It considers how the co-production can contribute to intervention development at four critical stages: defining the problem to be addressed by the intervention; which aspects of the problem are most amenable to change; defining and describing the change mechanisms that will achieve the intervention’s key goals; and the formulation of implementation systems and strategies. The chapter examines how members of a school community can be involved in shaping the aims, design and conduct of evaluation studies that accompany intervention development.