Within a comprehensive school health framework, promoting health involves using a whole-school approach to nurture a healthy school environment, one that enhances the well-being of students, supports positive learning outcomes and contributes to creating a healthy community.
There is no magic formula for reaching this goal. But the suite of practices on the right are all consistent with the health promotion approach set out on this site. They are all grounded in sound theory and contain components which are internally consistent and have been associated with effectiveness to varying degrees in the literature. All show promise in influencing a healthy school environment.
While some of the promising practices can be implemented individually, they will be more effective when implemented as part of an integrated strategy. This is because schools are social ecosystems in which a variety of factors interact to influence the health of the environment and of the students and staff within it. Applying evidence involves more than choosing just one or two components, even if each is associated with positive outcomes in a research study. All of the components need to fit together within a consistent comprehensive framework and theoretical model in order to work most effectively in the real world. Changing the environment takes time, but even small steps matter.
Click individual items to access information related to each promising practice, and follow the links to both the evidence that supports the practice and the tools that can be used to implement it.
The implementation of health promotion always means more than simply following a set of instructions. In other words, the promising practices presented here must be tailored to your particular setting and the resources that are available to you. CARBC is glad to provide consultation and support to help schools with this process and will continue to identify and develop tools to help schools implement the change process.