From leadership research to district action: Mapping actions to promote physical activity in light of Health Promoting Schools

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: review-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

ABSTRACT Objectives: to map actions to promote physical activity and health for children and adolescents in light of the Health Promoting School model. Methods: a documentary study, mapping the proposed actions in 18 documents from the World Health Organization, the Brazilian Ministry of Health and systematic reviews on the subject. Researchers performed the convergence and summary of actions using Health Promoting School model as well as analysis of clarity and semantics of recommended actions. Results: after analyzing the 360 actions initially verified, 36 were mapped, covering governance standards (20 actions in four standards) and school context structuring (16 actions in four other standards) to be an Health Promoting School. Conclusions: this mapping is a tool to support the planning and implementation of studies and educational intervention programs that aim to develop health promotion in Brazilian schools in in light of Health Promoting School guidelines.

Study methods

Since this study used data available for public consultation and did not involve human beings, it was not forwarded for consideration by the Research Ethics Committee. However, it is important to note that the ideas of the authors who supported this research were duly cited and referenced.

Limitations

Some limitations of this study need to be highlighted. The search was restricted to documents published in English and Portuguese. This is also because HPS model is not yet widely disseminated, with the studies found coming from more comprehensive school health actions and with specific topics as previously mentioned. Furthermore, the convergence of the 36 actions represents a strategy to dimensionally several actions. However, details of each possible action end up being hidden when grouping them. Therefore, the analysis of convergence of the 36 actions by readers should be accompanied by the initial list of actions (see supplementary material 1) so that it is possible to analyze and adapt the details of actions to each reality and possibility.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Janiel Ferreira Felício; Isabela Natasha Pinheiro Teixeira; Victor Hugo Santos de Castro; Raquel Sampaio Florêncio; Victor José Machado de Oliveira; Laécio de Lima Araujo; Valter Cordeiro Barbosa. Mapping actions to promote physical activity in light of Health Promoting Schools. Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (2025-11-07). https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7167-2024-0211

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.