APPLE Schools was established to improve eating habits, enhance mental well-being, and increase physical activity among Canadian youth by using schools as a powerful setting for change. Since children spend most of their waking hours in school, it is an ideal place to influence daily habits, build supportive environments, and integrate health into everyday learning.
Healthy students are better equipped to learn, and APPLE Schools reinforces this connection by helping children develop the foundations for both personal well-being and academic success. Learning to make healthy choices early in life leads to healthier, more resilient communities in the future.
By providing students with programming and an environment that supports the development of skills, knowledge, and attitudes towards healthy habits, we empower them to embrace lifelong wellness behaviours.
APPLE Schools partners with underserved schools to intentionally embed healthy habits, lessons, and experiences into daily routines, the physical and social environment, and across the curriculum—creating a culture where making healthy choices is the norm for students, staff, and families.
Collaborating closely with school communities, we identify unique health goals and develop tailored action plans. Through ongoing mentorship, professional development, funding and provision of best-practice resources, we empower schools to prioritize student well-being. Students play a pivotal role in leading and participating in initiatives, ensuring peers are actively engaged in the process.
Our partnerships with the Universities of Alberta and Toronto ensure our approach is grounded in scientific research and continually measured to show our ongoing impact on health behaviours. The evidence generated not only informs school communities of actions and outcomes, but also empowers them to drive meaningful change and sustain a culture of health.
Our impact has been widely published by the scientific community.
APPLE Schools continues to demonstrate exceptional scalability and measurable impact, now supporting 108 schools and reaching over 35,000 students annually—up from 70 schools and 20,000 students in 2018. This growth reflects both the demand for our model and our ability to adapt to the evolving needs of diverse school communities.
A key driver of success is our unique mentorship model, which connects schools with dedicated health mentors who provide guidance, build staff capacity, and support long-term implementation of wellness initiatives. Recent expansion into new regions in Alberta and Ontario has extended our reach across Canadian provinces.
Combined with digital tools and resources, our approach continues to set the standard for equitable, scalable school health promotion in Canada.
After the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, we evolved our approach to ensure health priorities remained integral to school life—whether in-person or virtual. We offer best-practice digital resources on our website that encourage healthy initiatives at school and at home, shared through APPLE school health mentors and in regular communications like our school and family newsletters.
Additionally, in response to growing demand from experienced APPLE administrators to scale the project, we recently introduced the APPLE Ally Schools model—a flexible, cost-effective approach to expanding our reach. We collaborate with school and district leaders who have first-hand experience with APPLE Schools and invite them to opt into this model. These administrators identify a school health champion—typically a staff member who volunteers their time and passion for wellness—and work with us to bring the APPLE approach to life in a new school. This model responds to the growing demand for our approach, enabling us to extend our impact to more communities while preserving key components that make the APPLE Schools model effective.
These enhancements to our project reflect our ongoing commitment to innovation and equity, positioning APPLE Schools to continuously evolve and adapt—ensuring all school communities can foster health and well-being in changing educational landscapes.
APPLE Schools extends its support to additional schools as funding permits. We collaborate with school authorities to identify underserved schools and initiate discussions to assess their willingness and commitment to participate in our program.
We are unable to take on all interested schools at this time. However, we offer best-practice resources for free on our website
