Findings from the National Health and Nutrition Education Survey (NHANES) indicate that 31.9% of children and adolescents ages 2 through 19 are overweight, and 16.3% are obese (Ogden, Carroll, & Flegal, 2008). Coordinated School Health Programs (CSHP) have become increasingly popular in school districts across the country over the past 20 years and have been charged with tackling the childhood obesity epidemic. Creating policies around health can help to establish new healthy norms, shift behaviors, and provide explicit information on what is valued within the system, yet little is known about what factors facilitate and impede the adoption and implementation of these policies. This study considers three school districts in a Midwestern state that implemented new health policies to promote wellness and ultimately reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity. Rogers' (1995) Diffusion of Innovations and Durlak and DuPre's (2008) Framework for Effective Implementation provide strong evidence for factors that may predict successful implementation of school health policies. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three individuals in each school district (N=10) to understand how these policies were spread and ultimately implemented within the district. This study provides support for the importance of these two models and the role of the Coordinated School Health Team in predicting the success of health policy implementation.
Read
