Encouraging schools to promote health: Impact of the Western Australian School Health Project (1992-1995)

The Western Australian School Health (WASH) Project, a school health promot ion intervention operating or cr a four/year period (1992-1995), provided a comprehensive, year-long intervention to help successive groups of schools develop health promotion programs. The WASH Project worked with self-selec ted school communities and used community development strategies to support participating schools in identifying and responding ro health concerns rel evant to their students. This paper reports the school impact results of th e WASH Project. School impact data involved 24 variables categorized into t wo areas: school organizational factors supportive of health promotion, and school health promotion factors. Two methods of analysis were used: logist ic regression indicating the direction of change, and lineal regression ind icating the magnitude of change. Results demonstrated that schools successf ully made organizational changes, such as the allocation of additional rime , personnel, and monetary resources, to support health promotion.