Associations Between School Wellness Coordinators and Elementary School Physical Activity Practices

Introduction: Physical education is a key evidence-based strategy for providing and promoting physical activity (PA), reducing childhood obesity, and improving academic performance. The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 mandated school districts to designate school wellness coordinators, but did not require coordinators be designated for each school site. Like most states, Nevada left the option of designating school coordinators up to the district. School wellness and PA policy studies exist, but few have examined school-level PA practices in relation to the school wellness infrastructure, including the school-level designation of a wellness coordinator. 

Objectives: This study (a) assessed elementary school PA practices, including those associated with physical education (PE), recess, before, during and after school programs, and facilities, and (b) determined if the designation of a school-level wellness coordinator is associated with the implementation of strong elementary school physical activity (PA) practices.

Methods: Data are from the 2014 Nevada School Wellness Practices survey of nearly 350 elementary school principals from 17 Nevada school districts. Our main independent variable of interest was the existence of a designated school wellness coordinator. Outcomes of interest were a series of PA practices and environmental variables defined as “strong” if they were aligned with national recommendations or guidelines and/or were evidence-based practices shown to lead to increased school PA. Multilevel binary logistic regression models were used to examine associations between the presence of a school wellness coordinator and strong PA practices. We used random intercepts at the district level to control for the clustering of schools within districts.

Results: Compared to schools without a wellness coordinator, schools with one had over 7 times the odds of disseminating a wellness policy to all staff annually (OR = 7.086, p<.001), almost three times of the odds of requiring students to participate in PE at least 90 mins/week (OR = 2.987, p<.05), over twice the odds of training recess supervisors to promote PA (OR = 2.470, p<.05), 3.5 times the odds of providing before school PA programs (OR = 3.419, p<.05), almost three times the odds of providing after school PA programs (OR = 2.831, p<.05), and 2.5 times the odds of having active travel plans, such as safe routes to schools (OR = 2.547, p<.05).

Conclusions: Designation of an on-site wellness coordinator increases the likelihood of a school having evidence-based and/or recommended PA practices in place. Although the current 2014 reauthorization of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kid Act does not require schools to have a designated wellness coordinator, future reauthorizations should.