The national Finnish Schools on the Move programme support schools with their individual plans to promote school-based physical activity (PA). We examined the changes in adolescents' recess and overall PA in four lower secondary schools and described the school actions to promote students' PA and the local contact persons'…

This study examines whether parental smoking and single parenting were related to adolescents' school achievement and anti-smoking parental practices as well as how these factors predicted later smoking. The sample comprised 1163 Finnish students in Grades 7 through 9. Results show that at the beginning of the seventh grade, parental smoking and…

The aims of this study were to examine whether adolescent self-efficacy mediates the associations between parental control, perceptions of the importance of healthy nutrition for child health and barriers to buying fruits and vegetables and adolescent fruit consumption using a theoretically derived explanatory model. Data were drawn from a…

Health-related behaviors [physical activity (PA), nutritional quality of breakfast and sleep]; personal variables (self-esteem, attitudes to PA and gender) and socioeconomic status (SES) (school SES and parental education), were examined in relation to literacy and numeracy scores of 824 grade 3-7 children. Participants completed a questionnaire,…

Increasing media use among adolescents and its significant influence on health behavior warrants in-depth understanding of their response to media content. This study developed the concept and tested a model of Media Health Literacy (MHL), examined its association with personal/socio-demographic determinants and reported sources of health…

Understanding the contribution of the whole-school staff to health education (HE) is an important goal in HE research. This study aimed to identify the views of staff (principals; teachers; school nurses and doctors; counsellors and administrative, maintenance, canteen and cleaning staff) regarding the nature of their contribution to HE. The…

The school is an important setting for physical activity. The purpose of the present study was to examine the association between physical environmental characteristics and participation in daily physical activity during school breaks. Data from 130 schools and 16 471 students (Grades 4-10) in Norway were obtained in 2004 through self-administered…

The objective is to examine school-level program and policy characteristics and student-level behavioural characteristics associated with being overweight. Multilevel logistic regression analysis were used to examine the school- and student-level characteristics associated with the odds of a student being overweight among 1264 Grade 5-8 students…

To enable improvements in school health promotion, this paper examines associations between the number of health-promotion issues addressed by primary school teachers in the Netherlands and factors thought to influence this behavior. The main factors studied are context characteristics and constructs of attitude, social influence, self-efficacy…

This paper explores adolescent preferences for the setting, timing, delivery format, provider and key elements of tobacco control programmes. The need for programme sensitivity towards urban/rural, gender and ethnic subgroups is also discussed. Schools were purposively selected from the Southern Cape-Karoo Region, South Africa. Twelve prevention…

Mediation analysis is a statistical technique that can be used to identify mechanisms by which intervention programs achieve their effects. This paper presents the results of a mediation analysis of Ngao, an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) education program that was implemented with school children in Grades 6 and 7 in Tanzania in the…

This study examined the effectiveness of an intervention to increase levels of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) during girls' physical education lessons. Two Year 7 classes (age 11-12 years) were randomly appointed to control and experimental groups. Both followed the same six-lesson unit of gymnastics with identical lesson…