Engaging Stakeholders in the Healthy Campus Movement.

BACKGROUND: Institutions of higher education are increasingly attending to the health of their campus community. This article reports on a Healthy Campus Initiative (HCI) to build a culture of health. OBJECTIVES: Evaluate the applicability of the four action areas of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Framework to campus health and discuss challenges and lessons learned. METHODS: Observational, qualitative, and quantitative data were collected to describe partnership development, key stakeholder engagement, and stakeholder perceptions of healthy campus activity between 2016 and fall 2018. RESULTS: This initiative aligned with 3 of the four action areas of the Culture of Health Framework by making campus health as a shared value, fostering campus and local community collaborations, and creating a healthier and more equitable campus community. CONCLUSIONS: For institutions of higher education, the Culture of Health Framework is ideal to engage stakeholders to take action to create and build cultures of health.

A case study of middle school food policy and persisting barriers to healthful eating.

Decreasing access to competitive foods in schools has produced only modest effects on adolescents' eating patterns. This qualitative case study investigated persistent barriers to healthful eating among students attending an ethnically diverse middle school in a working-class urban neighborhood that had banned on campus competitive food sales. Participant observations, semi-structured interviews and document reviews were conducted. Unappealing school lunches and easily accessible unhealthful foods, combined with peer and family influences, increased the appeal of unhealthy foods. Areas for further inquiry into strategies to improve urban middle school students' school and neighborhood food environments are discussed.

Effects of a promotor training on local school wellness advocacy capacity.

There is gap between the enactment and implementation of local school wellness policies. Building the capacity of promotores to engage parents in strengthening local school wellness policy implementation is an innovative strategy. This evaluation study examines the effects of 6 hours of promotor advocacy training to improve local school wellness policy implementation. Consistent with psychological empowerment theory, the training and the related toolkit were designed to increase promotores' knowledge and self-efficacy to engage parents in advocating for improved local school wellness policy implementation. Pre-post training questionnaires (n = 74), five posttraining participant focus groups, and four staff member focus groups explored changes in promotor and participating organization capacity. Findings show increased participant self-efficacy, knowledge, and attitudes to advocate for improved local school wellness policy implementation. Participating organizations reported intention to continue supporting promotor local school wellness policy advocacy. Findings illuminate strategies to strengthen promotor capacity to engage parents in local school wellness policy advocacy.