The family team approach to fitness: a proposal

Disseminating health information to parents from school-based programs is beneficial in at least four ways: children need the support of their parents if they are to implement the behavior changes they learn in school, parents can benefit from the information themselves, adults may be especially willing to learn about promoting health when they have young children in the home, and efforts to promote healthful behavior changes among children may be more effective if interventions are aimed at attitudes and habits of the family rather than those of individual persons. In this paper are summaries of published research on influencing parents in youth-directed health education interventions, including recent data collected in the Minnesota Heart Health Program. Following the review of the literature is a plan for an in-home nutrition and physical activity intervention that could maximize the impact on the eating and exercise patterns of the parents and their children. Very little research has been reported on how important parents are as participants in the health promotion efforts directed to their children. Funding this proposal would help researchers to learn more about maximizing the impact of primary prevention interventions by studying a process for improving eating and exercise patterns of the family unit--the children and their parents--that could serve as a model health promotion program.