London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Behavioural interventions to improve health frequently use schools as a delivery platform and there is an increasing interest in and understanding of how the school environment itself can promote health and wellbeing.

In this MARCH-A seminar, we will hear about three trials assessing interventions which sought to modify the school environment and discuss what’s next for school-based interventions: INCLUSIVE aimed to reduce aggression and bullying victimisation in English secondary schools. The Good School Toolkit was developed by a Ugandan NGO (Raising Voices) and aimed to change the operational culture in schools to reduce violence. SEHER was a whole-school health promotion intervention in Bihar, India which aimed to improve school climate.

Chris Bonell is Professor of Public Health Sociology at the London School of Hygiene having previously worked at UCL, Oxford University and the Social Exclusion Unit. He is a member of the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and the NIHR Public Health Research Funding Board. His main research interests are school effects on health, adolescent health, sexual health and evaluation methods.

Karen Devries is a social epidemiologist with expertise in the prevention of violence against children and adolescents, and child protection.  She runs the Child Protection Research Group and is a member of the Gender, Violence and Health Centre. Her main research interests include: understanding the causes and consequences of violence against children and adolescents; understanding how resilience to adverse experiences is produced; and developing and testing interventions to reduce violence and other adverse experiences in childhood.

Sachin Shinde holds a PhD in Population Health and Epidemiology from LSHTM. He works with Sangath a Goa based non-government organisation and led SEHER. Currently, he is working as a Research Director on the PRIDE project which is aimed at developing and evaluating a trans-diagnostic psychological treatment for adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders in India. His primary research interests include social determinants of health and developing and evaluating complex interventions aimed at preventing and promoting health among adolescents.

The discussion will be moderated by Professor Helen Weiss. Helen Weiss is Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the MRC Tropical Epidemiology Group at LSHTM.  She is co-theme leader of the MARCH Centre Adolescent theme, and her research focuses on evaluation of interventions to improve adolescent health, especially mental health and HIV-related behaviours in low- and middle-income countries.