A journey into school health promotion: district implementation of the health promoting schools approach

The health-promoting schools approach has gained momentum in the last decade with many jurisdictions providing guidelines and frameworks for general implementation. Although general agreement exists as to the broad strokes needed for effectiveness, less apparent are local implementation designs and models. The Battle River Project was designed to explore one such local implementation strategy for a provincial (Alberta, Canada) health promoting schools program. Located in the Battle River School Division, the project featured a partnership between Ever Active Schools, the school division and the local health authority. Case study was used to come to a greater understanding of how the health promoting schools approach worked in this particular school authority and model. Three themes emerged: participation, coordination and, integration.