Teachers' experiences in co-creating an implementation plan for a public health intervention: a Health CASCADE study

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Education
• Implementation Science

Background:

• School-based interventions require teacher involvement for successful implementation.
• Teachers play a critical role in delivering and facilitating public health programs within schools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate teachers' experiences during the co-creation of a healthy sleep intervention implementation plan.
• To understand factors influencing teacher engagement in school-based public health intervention development.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative observational study design.
• Data collected from six teachers via six co-creation sessions and one focus group.
• Reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) conducted using NVivo 14.

Main Results:

• The demanding school context significantly impacted teachers' co-creation experiences.
• Positive experiences included principal support, input validation, and decision-making power.
• Negative experiences involved role conflict, low group cohesion, lack of peer support, and misaligned expectations regarding the co-creation process.

Conclusions:

• Co-creation processes for school public health interventions need researcher guidance due to teachers' lack of specific health promotion training.
• Capacity-building activities are essential to enhance teachers' skills and knowledge.
• Minimizing time demands is crucial for facilitating teacher participation in intervention development.