School Health Policies in the World: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Context: School health refers to a set of measures implemented to diagnose, provide, and improve the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of students and those staff who are in some way in contact with students. In this regard, various school health policies and programs are developed, each presenting a different aspect of school health. Therefore, the present study aims to review the scope of existing school health policies worldwide. Evidence Acquisition: This scoping review study was conducted in 2022 following the PRISMA-ScR reporting guideline. In this regard, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, and Google Scholar databases were searched from 2000 to 2022 for English documents using the keywords of policy, program, and school health. Finally, the related data were extracted by two reviewers independently and analyzed using thematic content analysis. Results: Based on the initial search, 16,439 records were retrieved, and 24 articles were eligible to be included in the study. Most of these studies were conducted in 2014, 2018, and 2020; three were conducted in 2021. Eleven studies employed the literature review method, nine were conducted in the United States, and 18 focused on presenting a comprehensive school health policy in all aspects. The most important aspects of school health policy include school nutrition policies, school environmental health, school, home, and community cooperation, comprehensive health education, provision of health services in school, physical activity, counseling, social and psychological services, and promoting the health of the working environment of school employees. Most of these articles had good quality. Conclusions: This review shows that the number of school health policies is low globally, and each country must prepare a comprehensive school health policy regarding their economic, social, cultural, environmental, and political conditions.