Program Champions Research Articles

The longevity of Growing Healthy: an analysis of the eight original sites implementing the School Health Curriculum Project.

The status of the Growing Healthy curriculum (School Health Curriculum Project [SHCP]) was examined in the eight sites selected in 1969 by the National Clearinghouse on Smoking and Health to receive funded training and implementation support. A contact person from each site completed and returned a questionnaire pertaining to the district's continued implementation (institutionalization) of the SHCP. Most districts had not continued to implement the program. Reasons for discontinuation included loss of the "program champion" and insufficient administrative leadership. Districts continuing to implement the program generally were smaller in size, and employed a part-time coordinator for the SHCP. Recommendations for institutionalizing future instruction programs include identifying replacement program coordinators and other administrators to ensure continuity and support for the program over time, and conducting process and impact evaluations on program effects.

How to Institutionalize Health Promotion Programs

Abstract This article presents six implications for practice that suggest how to optimize the institutionalization of health promotion programs. These six implications were derived from a study of ten health promotion programs funded by the Virginia State Health Department and operated by local schools and community health agencies. Institutionalization refers to the long-term survival of health promotion programs, i.e., survival well beyond an initial grant funding period. To generate the implications for practice, a multiple case design for cross-case comparisons was applied to the ten health promotion programs. In brief, the six practice implications are: 1) cultivating a "program champion"; 2) favoring organizations with mature "subsystems"; 3) favoring organizations in which health promotion "fits" with the organization's mission; 4) avoiding brokering relationships; 5) altering lengths of funding periods; and 6) funding existing worthy programs. The significance of these practice implications for both funding and implementing agencies is briefly discussed.

The role of linking agents in the diffusion of health promotion programs.

This article examines the role of state health department dental offices as linking agents in the diffusion of an effective preventive health program, the fluoride mouthrinse program (FMRP) in public schools. The aim of this program is to prevent dental caries by a weekly mouthrinsing by elementary school students. In contrast to the traditional focus of diffusion research on characteristics of the innovation and characteristics of the adopter, this study emphasizes an ecological approach, i.e., the transmittal mechanisms for diffusion. The state dental offices are examined as linking agents, which serve as program advocates or champions for diffusing the FMRP from the national level, where it was developed, to the thousands of local school districts and schools for adoption and continued delivery. Using data from interviews with state dental directors and archival sources, a multivariate model was developed and used to explain the percent of a state's elementary schools using the mouthrinse program. The results support the key role of linking agents in disseminating effective health promotion programs into actual use. Implications are discussed for both research and practice.