Dissemination and implementation of a policy on school health in public schools: A systematic review

BACKGROUND: The need to achieve school health and promote well-being that would transcend children’s school life has been highlighted in several studies. Promotion of health and well-being of children has not been achieved despite the prescripts of the World Health Organization and national mandates. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this systematic review was to explore and describe the current evidence on the dissemination and implementation of a policy on school health in public schools. METHODS: Five steps of a systematic review were used to achieve the purpose of the study. The steps include framing a clear review question, developing a search approach through gathering and classifying evidence, conducting a critical appraisal, evidence summary as well as the results. Ebscohost, SAE publications, Web of Science and JSTOR databases were used to identify articles written between 2013 and 2018 and to enable access to current studies on the promotion of school health. Keywords included the following: dissemination; implementation; school health policy; and public schools. The search yielded n = 1995 articles. From this figure, 1976 articles were ineligible and only 19 articles met the inclusion criteria. RESULTS: Seven themes emerged from the findings of this systematic review as follows: shared information, training and development of key role-players, programme development and research, commitment from key role-players, monitoring activities, executive support and collaborative partnerships. CONCLUSION: The findings show that it is possible for a policy on school health to be disseminated and implemented effectively in public schools.