Grant: Operating Grant: Population Health Intervention Research

On 30 June 2010 Eugene Coste Elementary School in Calgary closed. This was unexpected and due to a small number of enrolments. The final decision was made in March 2010. Children have to deal with the prospect of starting up in a new school, closer or further away from home and away from whatever comfort zone they had established at their former school. Because school connection is a predictor of child well being (in particular, substance use and school dropout), this is an important public health problem. By coincidence, in 2009 and early 2010, we undertook three baseline surveys among Grades 4-6 students, as the first step towards what we thought was going to be a two year whole school health promotion project with that school. That project was abandoned. Our facilitator instead acted as our eyes and ears in the school on how change was being experienced. New funding is now sought for a new idea, which is to investigate the impact of this unexpected event on the students in their destination school over time. We will follow the children to their destination school and determine, by repeated measurements (3 before the event and 6 after), the impact on their stress (cortisol), social networks, mental and physical health and health behaviours. We will also interview parents and gauge their reflections on the transition process. School closures are not uncommon. But there seems to be no other site in the world where, by coincidence, baseline assessment on health and health behaviours, social networks and a biological measure of stress were completed with a school prior to an unexpected policy decision of school closure. The destination school differs in size and grades taught from the original school, offering an unprecedented opportunity to look at how children adjust to a different context. The policies that drive school closure decisions might be carried out differently if comprehensive data on student impact were made available.