Implemented to last? Schools' strategies for promoting the sustainability of the '60 minutes a day of physical activity' initiative in Quebec primary schools.

Abstract

Background: Many studies have investigated the adoption and implementation of school-based physical activity interventions, but only a few have reported on their sustainability. Understanding the factors contributing to school-based physical activity interventions being maintained or abandoned is necessary to ensure that resource investments are effective.

Objective: This study aims to contribute to this understanding. We investigated the actions and strategies developed by the school teams participating in the Quebec Active at school! initiative in ensuring that the tailored interventions they had developed over the three-year degressive funding were maintained.

Methods: Target population was the 415 schools that reached the end of the three-year funding period in 2020. An online survey consisting of 27 multiple choice questions, each followed by open-ended questions in which respondents explained or justified their choice, was sent to all participating schools.

Results: A total of 397 of the 415 schools responded to the survey. The analysis showed that the school teams have integrated actions to foster sustainability during initial project planning and adoption. Eight main strategies were deployed to sustain the interventions: maintenance of the most popular physical activities, inclusion of the 60-min daily physical activity (DPA) initiative in the school Educational Project, student involvement in implementing DPA, maintaining a person in charge of DPA implementation, maintaining the committee in charge of DPA implementation, training new staff, researching new sources of funding, maintaining developed collaborations.

Conclusion: The initiative's bottom-up approach has favored school teams developing various sustainability strategies, whether at the institutional, organizational or community level. Given the acceleration of contemporary changes, it is inevitable that DPA interventions will need to be adapted and transformed. Therefore, what should be sustained is the schools' capacity building and innovativeness that has been generated by the new program implementation.