None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Society asks a lot of schools, including that they protect children's health and wellbeing. This trial will work out the best way of supporting schools, teachers and school communities to create and sustain school environments that protect children's physical and mental health. We will measure the impact and return on investment of this support on children's health and education outcomes as well as on the schools themselves.
Interventions
Primary Schools randomly selected for the intervention will receive a multistage process undertaken by each school community.
Prior to the intervention, the research team will collect data on quality of life, dietary and physical activity behaviours, sleep, food security, dental health and the school environment.
This information will be provided to the school and, through a series of three 2-3 hour face-to-face or online Group Model Building (GMB) workshops, factors affecting children’s hea
Primary Schools randomly selected for the intervention will receive a multistage process undertaken by each school community. Prior to the intervention, the research team will collect data on quality of life, dietary and physical activity behaviours, sleep, food security, dental health and the school environment. This information will be provided to the school and, through a series of three 2-3 hour face-to-face or online Group Model Building (GMB) workshops, factors affecting children’s health-related quality of life and health behaviours will be described and visualised using causal loop diagrams. The workshops will be led by a member of the research team and they will mark the start of the intervention. Participants will be from each school community (student leaders, principal, teachers, parents and friends, committee members, school canteen staff, health promotion officers, GPs, health reporters, food retailers) and we will use Systems Thinking In Community Knowledge Exchange (STICKE) software to help communities visualise factors affecting children’s health and to standardise the intervention design process across schools. Opportunities for improving health behaviours will be identified that build on existing actions and align with evidence of best practice. Children in Years 5 and 6 will help design intervention actions (action formulation) with the school principal, teachers, parents and friends, committee members, school canteen staff, and community leaders (e.g. health promotion officers, GPs, health reporters, food retailers). Intervention actions (typically 20 to 30) will then be implemented by the school. Examples of specific actions include banning sweetened beverages and establishing walking and cycling zones around school premises. After identifying the intervention actions, a fourth GMB workshop, GMB4, will be conducted a week or two later to link these actions to school readiness and implementation support (community infrastructure and resources) using Active Implementation functions. This implementation process aims to strengthen the prevention support system for healthy eating and physical activity in schools. Follow-up GMB sessions will be conducted approximately every 6 months to update actions and strengthen implementation.
Sponsors
Deakin University
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Prevention
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
6 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
There are two types of participants in this study, adult staff from participating schools and support organisations and children attending participating schools. School and supporting organisational staff are eligible to participate if they are involved with healthy eating and physical activity in Schools All children in Years 4-6 at selected primary schools will be invited to participate.
Exclusion criteria
We will exclude schools with fewer than 120 children and schools exclusively educating children with special needs.
Outcome results
None listed