Health Dissemination and Implementation Within Schools

Abstract

Abstract This chapter emphasizes the enormous potential schools hold for impacting population health. Considering the constant presence of school in children’s lives for over 12 years, it is important to conduct research and plan programs that can work together across the life course to promote health and seek to understand how schools can help to link children to services beyond the school walls. A large gap between the evidence for effectiveness of school-based health interventions and the types of programs, policies, and services that currently influence the lives of children must be addressed. Future school-based dissemination and implementation research cannot overestimate the importance of developing strategies that are compatible with the primary aims of schools: promoting learning through reading, writing, math, and so on. Equally important is considering policy and environmental change strategies at the national, state, and district levels to promote health within schools.