Impact of school policies on non-communicable disease risk factors – a systematic review

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Ankur Singh¹  Sanjay Kinra²  MinHae Park²  Shalini Bassi³  Gaurang P. Nazar³  Kiran Saluja³  Monika Arora³ 

[1] Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health (ARCPOH), Adelaide Dental School, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia;Department of Non-Communicable Disease Epidemiology, Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK;Health Promotion Division, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Plot No. 47, Sector 44, 122002, Gurgaon, Haryana, India;

关键词: Non-communicable disease;    School policy;    Systematic review;    NCD risk factor;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-017-4201-3

 received in 2016-08-17, accepted in 2017-03-25,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundGlobally, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are identified as one of the leading causes of mortality. NCDs have several modifiable risk factors including unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use and alcohol abuse. Schools provide ideal settings for health promotion, but the effectiveness of school policies in the reduction of risk factors for NCD is not clear. This study reviewed the literature on the impact of school policies on major NCD risk factors.MethodsA systematic review was conducted to identify, collate and synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of school policies on reduction of NCD risk factors. A search strategy was developed to identify the relevant studies on effectiveness of NCD policies in schools for children between the age of 6 to 18 years in Ovid Medline, EMBASE, and Web of Science. Data extraction was conducted using pre-piloted forms. Studies included in the review were assessed for methodological quality using the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) quality assessment tool. A narrative synthesis according to the types of outcomes was conducted to present the evidence on the effectiveness of school policies.ResultsOverall, 27 out of 2633 identified studies were included in the review. School policies were comparatively more effective in reducing unhealthy diet, tobacco use, physical inactivity and inflammatory biomarkers as opposed to anthropometric measures, overweight/obesity, and alcohol use. In total, for 103 outcomes independently evaluated within these studies, 48 outcomes (46%) had significant desirable changes when exposed to the school policies. Based on the quality assessment, 18 studies were categorized as weak, six as moderate and three as having strong methodological quality.ConclusionMixed findings were observed concerning effectiveness of school policies in reducing NCD risk factors. The findings demonstrate that schools can be a good setting for initiating positive changes in reducing NCD risk factors, but more research is required with long-term follow up to study the sustainability of such changes.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017