Applying a Health Promoting Schools approach to nutrition interventions in schools: key factors for success

To assess the effectiveness of using a Health Promoting Schools (HPS) framework to deliver a nutrition intervention in schools.

'CREATE healthy eating in schools' used a HPS framework to assist key school health stakeholders to increase healthier food and drink choices across 68 schools in South Australia. Data were collected on a range of measures including workshop feedback, resource evaluation, canteen menu assessments and case studies.

Twenty-nine workshops were provided across 10 metropolitan and rural locations. Overall, 254 participants from 60 schools attended workshops, with an average of three people from each school. An average of 90% of all respondents found workshops useful/very useful, with most participants reporting they had increased knowledge and skills of healthy eating, healthy eating guidelines and menu planning at the end of workshops. At the completion of the program, many participants reported increasing healthy food choices across the school. Menu assessments of a small selection of participating school menus (n=10) supported these findings, with the majority of menus (n=9) showing increases in healthy food choices from 2005 to 2006.

Implementation of the 'CREATE healthy eating in schools' program resulted in self-reported improvements in healthy eating activities and increases in healthy food choices in a number of schools.