Achieving societal IMPACT on public health with the Healthy School Start programme

The purpose of the project is to develop a training and implementation support package to enhance the uptake and impact of the evidence-based Healthy School Start (HSS) family support programme.

Family support is recommended in national guidelines for the prevention and treatment of unhealthy behaviours in children aged 6-12-years but is not provided routinely in Sweden today.

In a series of randomised-controlled trials in areas with high health needs we have developed, implemented and evaluated this programme, which has shown beneficial effects on child diet, physical activity and weight development.

Several school organisations are now interested in establishing the HSS permanently but need training and implementation support to get started.

The ongoing IMPROVE implementation study, financed by Forte, is in its final stage and will provide essential knowledge on the type and level of implementation support needed for high fidelity, making this project very timely.Based on our extensive experience of the school context we will develop and provide a central training and implementation support package in collaboration with Karolinska Institutet Executive and Professional Education (KI-EPE) on the online platform Canvas.

KI-EPE has a high level of credibility as a training provider for professionals.

The target groups for the educational package are school administration personnel, school principals, teachers and school nurses.

KI-EPE reaches a wide range of individuals in the health sector, schools, municipalities, school organisations and regions, providing an excellent opportunity to spread information about the training to a broad and relevant audience.This package will offer continuous technical support for implementation throughout Sweden at a reasonable cost for stakeholders.

KI-EPE holds high quality and has the necessary competence to perform this training package successfully together with the researchers behind the programme.