Action Research and School Community Health and Wellness: An Introduction to a Canadian Journal of Action Research Special issue

This special issue in The Canadian Journal of Action Research focusing on school community health and wellness has been a long time coming.Without question, these overlapping constructs (i.e., health and wellness) have become increasingly important and relevant in recent times.And certainly, across the nation, wellbeing-by many descriptors and deQinitions-has become a focus within many schools and school jurisdictions over the past 10 to 20 years (Montemurro et al., 2023).Such a focus has been evidenced by the purposeful and responsive attention and action placed upon a number of wellbeing-related concepts and initiatives.These concepts and initiatives include, among others, health promoting schools/comprehensive school health (McIsaac et al., 2017), mental health and mental health literacy (Mcluckie et al., 2014), social emotional learning (Mahoney et al., 2018), and daily physical activity (Stone et al., 2012).Moreover, the strengthening of contemporary school health-related programs (which include physical education, health education, physical activity, the social environment, teacher wellness, and psychological and counselling services, again among others) has been identiQied and utilized as a suitable mechanism to improve upon public health and education (Kolbe, 2019).