A school based community partnership for promoting healthy habits for life

Childhood obesity rates continue to increase and there is a need for innovative obesity prevention programs. Our objectives were to (1) create a community partnership, and (2) test an obesity prevention intervention that involved curriculum delivered in the classroom with 1:1 coaching delivered by nursing students on health parameters among 4th and 5th grade school children. Our primary hypothesis was that the intervention would result in significant increases in physical activity levels. 99 children from two schools participated in the program. Classrooms were assigned as intervention or control. All classrooms received standardized content on health habits by the public health nurse and children assigned to the intervention classrooms also received 1:1 coaching by nursing students, with fewer total visits at School A. Baseline and end-of-year data were collected for health parameters and physical activity. For School A, there were no significant differences between intervention and control children between baseline and end-of-year for all health outcomes. Due to a limited control group at School B, control and intervention groups at both schools were consolidated for analysis. BMI and BMI percentile increased at School A, but daily minutes of TV and servings of fruit juice decreased. At School B, there were decreases in BMI percentile and servings of soda/punch, plus increases in servings of fruits/vegetables and daily steps (baseline mean ± SEM = 10,494 ± 419 daily steps; end-of-year = 15,466 ± 585 daily steps). A multi-partner, community approach to obesity intervention shows potential for improving health in elementary school children.