Table 1 Lessons learnt from AFLY5 & implications for future school-based diet and physical activity (PA) interventions
Lesson learnt | Implication for future research and practice | Cross cutting themes | |
|---|---|---|---|
1) Child engagement | Building on existing knowledge and resources | Whole school approach | |
Provide children with a sense of ownership over diet and PA | Create activities that allow children to be actively involved and make choices over behaviours to develop a sense of autonomy | ||
2) School level | |||
-Organisational | |||
Identify a key contact in the school to lead the intervention | Support the teacher to act as a project champion – provide extra training and resource for this person | ||
-Curricular/ethos | |||
Embedding diet and PA across the curriculum | Include lessons across the curriculum | ||
Support teachers to act as positive diet and PA role models | Provide teachers with guidance on how to change their own behaviour and then model key behaviours to reinforce curriculum messages and to improve staff health | ||
Eating in school | Ensure school meal provision, rules around snacking and packed lunches consistently applied and are supportive of messages in intervention | ||
Space for physical activity and provision of extra-curricular sports/PA | Identify additional spaces in the school for physical activity | ||
Ensure provision of extra-curricular sports/PA consistent/supportive of messages in intervention | |||
3) Parental and community engagement | |||
-Parents | |||
Engage parents with homework | Include activities for parents and children to do together | ||
Bring the parents into school for events | Have shows, student demonstrations to create a “buzz” around diet and PA behaviour change | ||
-Wider community | |||
Invite those with appropriate skills in local area to speak to parents and children | Fits in with the healthy schools framework | ||
4) Government/policy level | |||
-Policy/school ethos | |||
Lack of teacher self-efficacy to teach PA | Increase broader teacher expertise in PA promotion – utilise existing continuing professional development programmes | ||
Incorporating diet and PA messages across the primary school years | Identify how diet and PA messages are presented across the curriculum and how skills and knowledge are reinforced and developed across the primary school years | ||
Environmental/setting | |||
Create facilities for cooking in schools | Negotiated access to school canteens, integrate with school food service. Identify other local resources. | ||
Create facilities for PA in schools | Identify local resources that could supplement pre-existing school resources. | ||