Grant: Dissemination Events

There is a growing body of evidence that school-based approaches can have an impact on physical activity levels and potentially, children's health. A recent report from the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that school health promotion can improve the health of children; and that interventions that adopt a multifaceted comprehensive approach are most likely to be effective. However, there appears to be a gap between demonstrating the effectiveness of novel physical activity interventions and the wide scale uptake and implementation of those effective interventions. Indeed, there is a paucity of research on uptake and implementation as it is often assumed that once a program or policy is deemed effective, uptake and implementation will occur spontaneously. The crucial next step is to ask the questions "What is known about the key factors that contribute to successful implementation of school-based physical activity health promotion models in the short and long term?" and "Where do we go from here"?" The primary objectives of this 2 day meeting are to: 1)Discuss theoretical frameworks and real world examples of successful uptake and implementation 2)Explore practice and policy perspectives and considerations inherent to the uptake and implementation of school-based physical activity models 3)Identify barriers to the uptake and implementation of knowledge about 'what works' 4)Identify a research/policy/practice agenda related to the dissemination and wide-scale implementation of school-based physical activity initiatives We will address these objectives by a) having presentations on well known international school-based models (Canada, USA, Europe) that have been shown to be effective and b) creating roundtable discussions that engage participants in a dialogue around practice and policy issues and 3) discussing an implementation research agenda. Participants of the meeting will include researchers, policy makers and practitioners.