Strengthening Krachtvoer as an efficient and effective instrument to promote integral health promotion at prevocational schools

At present, health promotion at prevocational schools in the Netherlands is highly fragmented. Schools tend to adopt isolated health promoting programs that are implemented as stand-alone interventions. Even when schools are operating as a certified Healthy School, they experience barriers in the implementation of an integrated approach. This integrated approach is assumed to lead to positive synergistic effects for both school and pupils. In contrast, fragmented or isolated intervention implementation is known to lead to weak participation of teachers and parents, unsatisfied students and a lack of (sustained) effects. If Dutch secondary schools want to address healthy dietary behavior within the Healthy Schools approach (i.e. thematic certificate ‘Nutrition’), Krachtvoer is the only intervention available that has been accredited by the Centrum Gezond Leven (CGL) at the level of ‘good indications for effectiveness’. To date, however, also Krachtvoer is typically implemented as stand-alone intervention. The objective of the proposed project is to strengthen the contents and implementation strategy of the educational dietary intervention ‘Krachtvoer’ as an efficient and effective stepping stone towards integral health promotion at prevocational schools. We aim to redesign the contents of Krachtvoer to have the ability to function as a flywheel to increase integrality of the Healthy School approach. In addition, we aim to redesign the implementation strategy of Krachtvoer to guide and support schools in successful implementation and continuation of the Healthy School approach. Three pre-vocational school locations of Citaverde College (i.e. Heerlen, Roermond and Horst) will actively participate in the process of redesign and development of the implementation support system. The redesign of Krachtvoer explicitly acknowledges the high burdens that prevocational schools currently face in living up to many demands in multiple areas (e.g. safety, educational targets). Consequently, the intervention and the implementation approach are based on the power of synergy: to reach more targets without investing additional energy. The proposed study is designed to conscientiously follow and refine the implementation using action-oriented research based on the Consolidated Framework For Implementation Research (CFIR). The end product consists of a complete and comprehensive online support package (including all intervention and implementation materials, best practices and procedures) that can be used to promote integrality of health promotion efforts at prevocational schools in the Dutch context.