Between 2004 and 2007, 45 schools participated in a Healthy Spines program on 56 occasions in total, involving over 3100 students, 200 school staff and almost 440 parents from Victoria, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. The school number is lower that the number of programs as more schools choose to run the program annually with a new generation of students. You can read about the outcomes for these schools in the 2007 Evaluation Report. It explains what is achieved for students, schools and Healthy Spines Team Members, and describes their opinions of the program. It also provides detailed background information on the program design, theory of health promotion and literature on spinal health issues for young people, prevention and spinal health promotion. It also discusses how Healthy Spines links with current national strategies and frameworks for health and wellbeing.
Students show a positive increase in the accuracy of their spinal health knowledge and reasoning. There achieve a marked positive shift in their application of this knowledge and reasoning - by the end of the program they have more and better ideas about what they can do to look after their spinal health.
Students also develop more and better ideas about how schools could help young people look after their spinal health - they provide specific suggestions for improving the school's policies/rules and environment, and helping students remember good spinal health behaviour. Overall, they show more understanding of the importance of promoting good spinal health and preventing spinal health problems.
Students are consistently positive about their experiences in the Healthy Spines Program, with the younger Year 3 and 4 students being more enthusiastic than their older peers in Years 5 and 6. The overwhelming majority of students report that they learn something new that is important to them and have fun.
Staff describe Healthy Spines as a valuable, professional and high quality program. They believe it has excellent content and uses hands-on activities that are useful teaching tools. They greatly appreciate the enthusiasm and commitment demonstrated by PTMs. Staff highly value working with people who have spinal health expertise in doing spinal health promotion work. At a personal level they like the opportunity to learn more about looking after their own spinal health.
Schools increase their awareness of how the school practices, policies and environments can support young people's spinal health and commonly take action on this within two months of the program ending. The degree of change they adopt varies according engagement and resources, although many can make a number of practical and relatively easy changes fairly quickly. These include:
Schools also update and extend school policies to improve their positive contribution to spinal health by becoming more consistent with good spinal health practices. The main areas of improvement relate to posture, physical status/activity, ergonomics and spinal health curriculum - schools are already quite active in addressing in injury prevention. Some schools have been able to buy better or adjustable chairs, but this is a capital expense that they need to plan in advance.
Staff observe changes in the students - staff frequently report that students feel empowered to take personal steps for better spinal health care, as well as how to assess and modify their environment to support good spinal health. Others report that students talk about their spinal health in the playground and classroom, and will even remind teachers about good spinal health practices. They also find that students begin talking more and reminding their peers about good spinal health practices.
Schools that decide to do the program follow-up activities, which extend the learning into other curriculum areas, and put ideas into practice report more success in students remembering and using what they learned in the program. In 2007 a variety of reproducible, electronic resources were provided to schools, which were greatly appreciated. Schools are keen to have more resources to support and extend their efforts in this area, with specific requests for audio-visual resources and online interactive games and activities.The viability of producing these resources will be explored in 2008.
The trend for schools to ask Team Members to return each year and run the program with the next generation of students at a specific year level as part of their annual curriculum is strengthening. Many schools will run their second, third or fourth Healthy Spines program in 2008.
Over 69% of parents who return surveys are aware of the program through attending meetings or reading program material sent to them - 38% are keen to have more detailed information so they can support their child in looking after their spinal health. In 2008 we will identify further strategies to implement in schools that will help respond to this request.
Almost all parents who are aware of Healthy Spines can identify at least some change in their child's spinal health knowledge - 59% say their child knows a fair bit or a lot more, while 30% report their child knows a little bit more. Most also report change in their child's spinal health care actions - 41% said their child is a fair bit or a lot better at looking after their spinal health, and 43% suggest this is a little better. About 51% of parents report that their child's class has done something to support children's spinal health (19% do not know if this has happened), but they were less sure about what the school was actually doing as a whole. We hope to strengthen parental knowledge by encouraging schools to share their changes with both parents and students, as both are keen to know about changes.
Over a third of these parents make additional comments or recommendations for the future of the Healthy Spines program. They are positive in almost all instances, experiencing Healthy Spines as a high quality program and welcoming the opportunity for their child and school to be involved. Comments are supportive and optimistic, with 67% of this group expressing the hope that the program would continue in their child’s school and other schools.
Program Team Members find Healthy Spines a very rewarding, fun and enriching experience. Although it stretches them in unexpected ways, they believe the training program is effective and valuable. The “pieces fall into place” as they implement Healthy Spines in schools and gain a more sophisticated understanding of the content and intent of the training program. Not only do they learn how to do school-based spinal health promotion, they also recognise connections between these skills and their application in their everyday work and personal environments. This helps increase their enthusiasm and commitment to doing health promotion work through Healthy Spines. In addition, they often emphasise the importance of the profession's involvement in health is promotion.