The Western Australian School Health Project: comparing the effects of intervention intensity on organizational support for school health promotion

The aim of this study was to evaluate changes in school health promotion pr actice related to two levels of intervention in the Western Australian Scho ol Health (WASH) Project: (1) a low-intensity intervention involving a sing le mail-out of WASH Project resources, and (2) a high-intensity interventio n involving training, planning time and expert support, The schools involve d in the study were divided into three groups, Treatment group 1 received t he high-intensity intervention, treatment group 2 received the low-intensit y intervention and a comparison group received no intervention, Two scales were developed to assess change, i.e. a school organizational scale (Chronb ach's alpha = 0.76) and a health promotion activity scale (Chronbach's alph a = 0.79), The results indicate that a high-intensity intervention, such as the WASH Project, which provides training to a critical mass of school com munity members from each school, ongoing access to an expert in the field, as well as dedicated planning time, is able to increase the comprehensivene ss and quality of health strategic planning by schools, Furthermore, the re sults suggest that a low-intensity mail-out intervention is no more success ful in initiating change that providing no intervention at all.