Please note this application is under active development. If you spot any errors or something isn't working, please contact us at evidence.service@wales.nhs.uk.

The WHO Health Promoting School framework for improving the health and well‐being of students and their academic achievement

Langford, R et al (2014)

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - 10.1002/14651858.CD008958.pub2

Evidence Categories

  • Care setting: Other settings
  • Care setting: School Setting
  • Population group: Children & Adolescents
  • Intervention: Environment / Policy Intervention
  • Intervention: Behaviour Change Interventions
  • Intervention: Advice/guidance
  • Intervention: Multicomponent physical activity interventions
  • Intervention: Whole system interventions
  • Outcome: Change in physical activity

Type of Evidence

Systematic Review

Aims

The authors state:

"This systematic review aimed to assess the effectiveness of the Health Promoting Schools (HPS) framework in improving the health and well‐being of students and their academic achievement."

Findings

The authors state:

"We included 67 eligible cluster trials, randomising 1443 schools or districts. This is made up of 1345 schools and 98 districts. The studies tackled a range of health issues including physical activity. The quality of evidence overall was low to moderate as determined by the GRADE approach. 

We found positive effects for some interventions for: body mass index (BMI), physical activity, physical fitness, fruit and vegetable intake. Intervention effects were generally small but have the potential to produce public health benefits at the population level. We found little evidence of effectiveness for standardised body mass index (zBMI) and no evidence of effectiveness for fat intake. It was not possible to meta‐analyse data on other health outcomes due to lack of data."

Conclusions

The authors state:

"The results of this review provide evidence for the effectiveness of some interventions based on the HPS framework for improving certain health outcomes but not others. More well‐designed research is required to establish the effectiveness of this approach for other health topics and academic achievement."