The schoolBeat-approach is made up of six – relatively easy to apply – steps as part of a coordinated support of tailored school health promotion. Field experience with these steps is still limited. From other studies, it is widely accepted that general community programs take may years to produce results (Goodman, 1998). Hence, little can be said about its proven effectiveness as yet.
During the initial development of the schoolBeat approach some shortcomings were identified, which were addressed as well. As some of the introduced new concepts in school health promotion deal with one or more of the priority areas for enhancing the effectiveness of school health promotion, it seems worthwhile to take a long-term perspective with this approach. In the meantime, some of these new concepts have been lifted from the regional level to the national level to facilitate long-term regional implementation. For example, application of the schoolBeat quality-checklist to nationally available school-based health promotion programs does not fit fully with the set tasks of regional health promotion agencies. On the other hand, application of the checklist and making assessment results publicly available does fit with tasks set by the National Government for National Health Promotion Institutes to support regional and local health promotion.
Based on theoretical planning, formative research and preliminary fieldwork, we have high expectations of the added value of the ‘schoolBeat quality-checklist’ and the ‘DISC-model’ in the field of school health promotion.
The use of the quality checklist and the diagnosis-model in other countries and cultures is welcomed in order to gain a wide spectrum of field experiences and insights into possible points for improvement.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the schoolBeat coalition partners (schools, municipalities, health promotion and welfare organizations: Bureau Youth Care Limburg, RIAGG Maastricht, Mondriaan Zorggroep, Trajekt, Maastricht Public Health Institute, NIGZ and Maastricht University) for their constructive advice and support in developing and realizing the schoolBeat approach.
Thanks also to Justin Winton for his help in the preparation of this manuscript.
The schoolBeat study is supported by a grant from ZonMW Healthy Living (project 4010.003) and from the OGZ Foundation (project p342).
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