Children in the USA spend more than half of their waking hours in school, creating an appropriate environment for addressing student health and wellness (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014d; Institute of Medicine, 2012). Research emphasises the link between health and academic achievement, suggesting that school-based initiatives which support physical health (i.e. nutrition, physical activity) and social and emotional health (i.e. bullying prevention, mental health) are critical within the school setting (Basch, 2011; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011).

Federal legislation in 2006 and 2010 brought major changes to the landscape of school wellness efforts, particularly in local school wellness policy (United States Department of Agriculture, 2016). Unfortunately, several studies report that the school environment and policy changes that took place as a result of this legislation were less effective than originally hoped, resulting in a need for strategies to improve the development and implementation of stronger, healthier school wellness policy (Kim, 2012; Metos and Murtaugh, 2011; Smith et al., 2012).

The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model seeks to integrate the traditional coordinated school health model into an expanded framework, supporting health and academic success through a collaborative environment (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014d). Most importantly, the model also supports professional development as a key factor in improving school wellness environments (Lewallen et al., 2015). The availability of continuing education opportunities for school professionals, such as health and physical education teachers, has increased over the last 10 years, but is often limited to the content of the subjects they teach, not school wellness overall (Brener et al., 2013). When it comes to improving wellness culture, significant barriers exist to implementing and sustaining quality wellness policies and programmes, including staff buy-in, lack of programme leadership and integration of policy and programming into current school culture (Bennett et al., 2016; Inchley et al., 2007). In addition, limited knowledge among school professionals about the most appropriate strategies to employ can also hinder implementation (Agron et al., 2010; Budd et al., 2009). This is compounded by limits to the time and financial resources available for these individuals to participate in professional development (Anderson and Enge, 2012; Vought-O’Sullivan et al., 2006).

Web-based education in the form of short, topic-centred webinars can be used to offer information about effective strategies for improving school wellness policies and environments. In addition, this format of professional development can be accessed at low or even no cost to the participant and their school employer. In this article, we describe our approach to webinar delivery as a means to improving knowledge about effective strategies for increasing school wellness efforts.

Data from the post-webinar evaluation survey indicate that this model of professional development is valuable for both increasing knowledge around school wellness topics and inciting motivation among participants, who may take action to improve wellness efforts in their respective school settings. On average, survey respondents agreed that the webinars were effective at increasing participant knowledge of the webinar topic area (4.3 out of 5.0), suggesting that webinars are a useful tool for increasing awareness of these important school health topics and strategies. In addition, 95% (n = 69) of the surveyed individuals who found it applicable indicated that they plan to share the information gained with a colleague, thereby increasing the reach of the initial live webinar. Most importantly, in the subgroup of participants that described it as applicable, 83% (n = 49) of respondents reported that they plan to take action through conducting an assessment, creating a wellness council, developing a joint use agreement, suggesting healthier food and beverage marketing or fundraising options, increasing water access in schools or improving physical education and physical activity opportunities. These findings demonstrate that short, informational training opportunities, like this webinar model, can serve as a catalyst for positive change in school wellness environments.

The need for professional development opportunities in areas of school wellness strategy is persistent in the literature (Agron et al., 2010; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c; Murray et al., 2015). The WSCC model calls on higher education, philanthropic organisations and government agencies to utilise the framework to develop professional development opportunities for improving school health within the WSCC constructs (Lewallen et al., 2015). In addition, the CDC cites the need for continuing education across school professionals in a variety of health-related topics in the School Health Guidelines to Promote Healthy Eating and Physical Activity and their Bridging the Gap research briefs (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). With these calls to action, however, come barriers to implementation. The literature suggests that schools face many barriers to ensuring school professionals receive the training and education needed, including available time, cost of participation (i.e. substitutes, travel and registration) and competition for resources with other academic subjects (Agron et al., 2010; Anderson and Enge, 2012; Budd et al., 2009). Webinars are a useful model for meeting the education needs while overcoming many of the barriers that prohibit schools from meeting these recommendations. In support of this concept, our method of web-based professional development utilises a live, concise (30–60 minutes) and participant-engaging delivery, along with offering a publicly accessible archived version of the webinar on our organisation’s website¹. In addition, relevant resources, guides, templates and contact information of content experts accompany each archived webinar. All webinars were offered free of charge to participants, eliminating the barrier of cost, both in terms of event registration and travel.

The literature reporting on the industry standard for webinar attendance suggests that it ranges from 30% to 45% (Britton, 2014; ON24 Inc., 2016). As evidenced by our webinar registration-to-attendance conversion rate of 52%, attentiveness and variety of school and wellness professionals that attended these webinars, it is clear that the topics offered are of interest to school wellness advocates, both inside and outside of the school walls. In addition, the attendance data suggest that different topics attract a different majority of these staff types. The school health assessment webinar, which described the importance of school wellness assessment along with how to conduct the assessment and use the resulting information, attracted a large proportion of school nurses. These data suggest that school nurses may be an audience that could serve as leaders within schools in the area of wellness assessment and may benefit from additional training opportunities in this respect (Kubik et al., 2007; Maughan et al., 2015; Schroeder et al., 2016). In addition, the school wellness council webinar, which described the purpose of a wellness council along with how to develop and sustain a council, had the largest number of participants. Interest in this topic is timely, due to the federal requirement of all schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program to develop or revise their Local Wellness Policy and implement a wellness council to ensure its implementation and regular revision (United States Department of Agriculture, 2016). These data suggest that everyone in the school setting should be considered for the role of wellness leader and call for school wellness resources that speak to the differing perspectives of teachers, school nurses and administrators, among others. This aligns with the body of literature that supports a coordinated approach to school wellness (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011; Lewallen et al., 2015).

The work outlined in this article is important in that (1) to our knowledge, it is the first study addressing a gap in the literature around the use of webinars as a professional development method for school health topics and (2) it is a response to the call to action for the use of professional development in making positive changes to the school wellness environment. In addition, the varied group of attendees, both school and community-based, indicates that this model and topics selected are valuable to a general audience. However, several limitations exist. First, the data collected on participants is limited and does not include standard demographic information, such as age, gender and race. Second, because the participant intention and knowledge data are only collected through the post-webinar survey with no baseline comparison, our ability to draw certain conclusions is limited. In the future, we plan to facilitate the collection of more post-programme surveys by only offering the certificate of completion to individuals who complete the survey. Finally, webinars as a mechanism for professional development are largely informational and therefore require motivation on the part of the participant to make change as a result of the information they acquire. However, our webinar methodology aims to encourage interaction both during the webinar, through polling and question and answer sessions, and after the webinar, through archiving each webinar recording on our website and accompanying it with applicable resources for taking the next step. A consideration for future web-based professional development offerings may be to incorporate technical assistance support as follow-up to participants, but this would need to be explored more fully.