Wellness Program Implementation: School & Student Toolkits

This research project focuses on enhancing implementation of school wellness activities with the goal of achieving federal lifestyle recommendations to reduce obesity. The study will evaluate whether using a toolkit approach with problem-solving and other strategies helps schools and students develop healthier lifestyle choices.

At the school level, we will focus on implementation barriers identified by (or brought to) the school Wellness Champion Network (e.g., crowded gym, lack of equipment, food service issues) using a toolkit approach that builds on the Alliance for a Healthier Generation school toolkits.

At the student level, the toolkit will focus on a self-assessed health-behavior feedback mechanism to personalize behavioral goal setting when addressing obesity related lifestyle recommendations.

An iterative intervention dissemination will be used to achieve sequential roll out to all HealthCorps-affiliated Living Lab schools over time. This design allows for an increasingly larger selection of schools to receive the enhanced support through participation research principles to determine how to address obesity-related school mandates. Consistent with participatory research principles, all HealthCorps coordinators have received training to function as Wellness Council facilitators. This study will evaluate a participatory implementation model designed to extend wellness and stakeholder collaborations towards achieving policy standards and goals focusing on the school wellness network. By the end of the study, all HealthCorps Living Labs schools will be implementing this participatory implementation for wellness programming.

This implementation approach increases the potential for learning lessons that can be generalized more widely as in pragmatic trials. In keeping with participatory research principles, school Wellness Councils will use data obtained during the trial as feedback for potential refinement of their toolkit components.