Local School Wellness Policy as a Means to Advance Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child: Assessing Alignment in Los Angeles County

BACKGROUND District wellness policies provide an avenue to advance the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. The extent to which wellness policies currently align with WSCC is unclear; to-date, tools have been unavailable to examine this issue. METHODS We reviewed written health-focused policies among 37 school districts in Los Angeles County in 2017 utilizing a 54-item tool designed to examine the quality of policies in the 10 WSCC domains. Descriptive analyses explored overall and domain-specific comprehensiveness and strength; simple negative binomial regression models examined differences in the policy quality and structure by legislated status. RESULTS Approximately half of expected policies were present in wellness policies (mean comprehensiveness score = 52.65, +/- 18.09), < 20% were strong (mean strength score = 16.97, +/- 8.05). Content in WSCC domains addressed by legislative mandates was significantly more comprehensive and stronger, and more frequently located within the wellness policies, relative to content in non-legislated domains. CONCLUSIONS Opportunities exist for better alignment of wellness policies with WSCC. Education and health practitioners can utilize the tool developed for this study to identify priority areas where policy support is needed in their jurisdictions. Additional efforts are needed to help schools facilitate and document practice gains around WSCC-aligned policies.