Anne Lounamaa

Health promotion and disease prevention often take the form of population- and individual-based interventions that aim to reduce the burden of disease and associated risk factors. There is a wealth of programs, policies, and procedures that have been proven to work in a specific context with potential to improve the lives and quality of life for many people. However, the challenge facing health promotion is how to transfer recognized good practices from one context to another. We present findings from the use of the implementation framework developed in the Joint Action project CHRODIS-PLUS to support the transfer of health promotion interventions for children’s health and older adults identified previously as good practices. We explore the contextual success factors and barriers in the use of an implementation framework in local contexts and the protocol for supporting the implementation. The paper concludes by discussing the key learning points and the development of the next steps for successful transfer of health promotion interventions.

Background: Although injuries at school are an important issue in public health, environmental factors in schools and school yards have seldom been the focus of school injury research. The goal of our investigation was to examine the effect of environmental factors on school injuries. Methods: Nine comprehensive Finnish schools registered school injuries over a period of two school years. Injuries were classified as being associated with environmental factors, suspected environmental factors, and others. The consensus between two independent classifiers was 81%. Results: A total of 722 injuries were classified. In 11.6% of these injuries, the physical environment factor was evident, and in 28.1% of the injuries, physical environment was suspected of being a contributory risk factor. Thus the physical environment of the school was a contributing factor in over a third (39.7%) of injuries occurring in the school, on the school yard or during the journey to or from school. In this study, conducted in Finland, ice on the ground was mentioned most frequently as an environmental risk factor. Conclusions: In Finland, the Nordic weather conditions are not taken into account in the school yard and playground plans as they ought to from the safety point of view. An initiative has been launched on a mandatory wintertime master plan for every school yard.

Background