Sun Safe Schools: An effective program to motivate and support school districts to adopt sun protection policies for students

In 2002, CDC recommended that the nation's schools establish policies that reduce exposure to UV radiation in sunlight to decrease students' lifetime risk of skin cancer. The Sun Safe Schools program was developed to promote adoption of sun protection policies by public school districts. The 2-year program provided information, tools and technical assistance to district administrators through printed materials, a website, meetings by health educators, and presentations to school boards. Sun Safe Schools was evaluated in a randomized pretest-posttest controlled trial, enrolling 112 public school districts in Southern California (n=56) and Colorado (n=56). Formal school-board approved policies were obtained from 103 districts (92%) at pretest and posttest and coded for presence (0=no, 1=yes), strength (0= not address, 1=allow/recommend, 2=require), and sun protection intent (0=indirect, 1=direct) of 10 sun protection content areas. Twelve districts receiving Sun Safe Schools changed their policies and increased sun safety content while 6 districts in the control group did so. Analyses showed that intervention districts (adjusted M=3.06) adopted sun safety policies that were stronger than control districts (adjusted M=1.78; range=0-13; p=0.041 [2-tailed]). Intervention districts (adjusted M=2.29) also tended to increase the number of sun protection content areas compared to control districts (adjusted M=1.43; range=0-9; p=0.059 [2-tailed]), but this difference was not significant. Sun Safe Schools improved policies most on outreach to parents (19.2% intervention; 5.9% control, p=0.041 [2-tailed]). A multi-faceted technical assistance program can increase adoption of policies for reducing UV exposure of students by public school districts. Future research should explore how policies are implemented.