Background: Students' sense of school belonging is important for mental health, physical health, and academic performance. However, some students do not feel as though they belong in their schools. This study investigated Greek secondary school students' perspectives on practices that enhanced their sense of belonging during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

Background: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth aged 10-24 years in Washington State. Population-based data on suicidality among sexually and gender diverse (SGD) youth and modifiable protective factors from Washington are limited. Methods: Using data from the 2021 Washington Healthy Youth Survey, a statewide,…

Background: Income inequality is theorized to impact health. However, evidence among adolescents is limited. This study examined the association between income inequality and health-related school absenteeism (HRSA) in adolescents. Methods: Participants were adolescents (n = 74,501) attending secondary schools (n = 136) that participated in the…

Background: Return to school supports are recommended to facilitate adolescents' re-entry to school following a concussion. However, little is known as to what school stakeholders prefer for a return-to-school process. This study sought to describe the preferences of high school students, parents, and educators for a Return-to-School Framework for…

Background: We examined whether subgroups of adolescents experienced disparate changes in school connectedness--a robust predictor of multiple health outcomes--from before the COVID-19 pandemic to the first full school year following pandemic onset. Methods: We used 2 waves of prospective survey data from 7178 students attending 41 Canadian…

Background: To inform prevention strategies, this study provides incidence, factors, and actions taken when a suspected concussion occurred in K-12 schools in Utah. Methods: Data were collected using Utah's Student Injury Reporting System (SIRS) from the academic years 2011-2012 to 2018-2019. SIRS is a unique online system that tracks injuries…

Background: This study described how adolescents and the parents saw their moral responsibilities with regard to adolescents using alcohol. Methods: This was a deductive secondary analysis, based on Hart's taxonomy of moral responsibility. The primary studies were based on 19 group interviews with 87 adolescents aged 14-16 and 17 interviews with…

Background: The purpose of this study was to examine the prospective associations between 17 individual, family, and community level youth assets and truancy among adolescents living in 1-parent and 2-parent households. Methods: Five waves of data were collected annually over a 4-year period from a racially/ethnically diverse sample of adolescents…

Background: National adherence to the recess recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not been comprehensively studied in the United States. Methods: Data from 6 nationally representative data sets over the last decade (Classification of Laws Associated with School Students, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study,…

Background: It is vital to improve the mental health (MH) of young people in Hong Kong, where the suicide rate has nearly doubled among those aged 15-29 years since 2014. This multi-method evaluation aimed to assess Coolminds, which promoted MH literacy by engaging students, parents, and educators in secondary schools in Hong Kong. Methods:…

Background: Schools are important arenas for the promotion of critical health literacy (CHL) among adolescents. Key domains of CHL are information appraisal, understanding social determinants of health, and abilities to act on determinants of health. In this paper, we examine the psychometric properties of the Critical Health Literacy for…

Background: Increasingly, there are calls for educational equity to explicitly include LGBTQ+ students, including the creation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) clubs, or Genders and Sexualities Alliances (GSAs), which are associated with positive outcomes for LGBTQ+ students and promote a safer school climate…

Background: Physical activity is beneficial to physical, social, and emotional well-being, and schools are required to provide opportunities to engage in physical activity. While physical education and school sport have been extensively researched, little is known about the value of informal, unstructured, exercise opportunities. Methods: This…

Background: Exposure to injury and violence early in life increases the risk of experiencing injury and violence later in life. In 2019, the top 3 leading causes of death among 15- to 18-year-olds in the United States were unintentional injury, suicide, and homicide. This study examines the extent to which schools promote injury and violence…

Background: In-school transmission of COVID-19 among K-12 students is low when mitigation layers are used, but the risk of acquiring COVID-19 during school bus transportation is not well defined. Given the operational limitations of many school districts, more data is needed to determine what mitigation is required to keep COVID-19 transmission…