Programa Escolas Promotoras de Saúde: processo inicial de implementação em Belo Horizonte/MG

Abstract

The Health Promoting Schools (HPS) program aims to provide students with access to health promotion actions, leading to improvements in their quality of life and school performance. However, the implementation of the program on a large scale has been successful in only a few countries. Additionally, there is a scarcity of studies addressing the challenges of HPS implementation and strategies to overcome them. This thesis evaluates the initial implementation process of the HPS model proposed by the Affordable Health Initiative (AHI) in schools attending socially vulnerable communities, in Belo Horizonte (BH). The AHI HPS model is based on the Ottawa Charter and Implementation Research (IR) and includes dental care among its interventions. The first stage of this thesis involved qualitative research to assess the acceptability, adoption, sustainability, and feasibility of the AHI HPS model. Content analysis was conducted on 10 records of meetings held by the Implementation Committee (IC). Additionally, five interviews were conducted with key informants who attended the meetings. The participants expressed acceptance and willingness to contribute to the implementation of the model, recognizing its simplicity and suitability for schools. Facilitating factors included joint planning, intersectoral collaboration, and alignment with existing policies and actions. However, barriers such as parental engagement, limited resources, funding, and time constraints were acknowledged, which must be addressed for successful implementation. The second stage comprised a scoping review to map and synthesize the literature on implementation research that assessed the cost of health-promoting interventions in elementary schools. The searches were conducted in the databases: LILACS, MEDLINE, Cochrane, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, Eric, and in gray literature (Google Scholar), in January 2022, using filters for publication date and language. A total of 492 articles were selected, and 11 met the eligibility criteria. As the studies involved interventions from different health promotion areas, it was impossible to compare costs and effects. The results pointed out that despite the cost being widely referred to as a barrier to implementing school health interventions, there are still few studies on the subject. The reporting of economic evaluations requires attention as they failed to report data, such as the analytical perspective, methods of measuring costs, and treatment of uncertainty. As a result of this thesis, it was decided to conduct an ongoing systematic review of the literature on the cost components of school-based oral health-promoting programs to provide tools for the cost analysis of dental care proposed by the AHI HPS model. It is expected that the findings of this thesis will contribute to improvements in the implementation process of the program in the participating schools, and encourage and support its expansion to others.