The Health Evidence Network’s synthesis aimed to provide answers to the following questions: “What is the evidence on school health promotion in improving health or preventing disease and, specifically, what is the effectiveness of the health promoting schools approach?”
It identified studies that covered mental health, aggressive behaviour, healthy eating, physical activity, substance use and misuse, or driver education. However, no studies evaluated the cost-effectiveness of the programmes or interventions.
The report concludes that sound evidence of school health promotion as improving health or preventing disease exist and their effectiveness has also been reviewed and assessed. Most notably, some of the most effective programmes are those that promote mental health, healthy eating and physical activity.
On the contrary, the synthesis confirmed that programmes on preventing subtance use are among the least effective of school health promotion programmes.
Among the factors that contributed to efficiency, HEN identifies long term multifactorial interventions (eg programmes that involve teaching health knowledge in the classroom, as well as changing the physical environment of schools and involving across-sectoral linkage, enhanving the role of parents, personal skills development, etc) as particularly effective.
However, the majority of the studies included in the synthesis were carried out in the United States and therefore the relevance to European patterns must be considered.
