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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Diane Manuel, PhD, MBA, The California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St, Los Angeles, CA 90012, 800.449.4149, DManuel@calendow.org, Sarah Samuels, DrPH, Samuels & Associates, 663 13th Street, 3rd Floor, Oakland, CA 94612, Pat Crawford, DrPH, RD, Center for Weight and Health, UC Berkeley, 9 Morgan Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, and Antronette Yancey, MD, MPH, Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, Box 951772, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1772.

The California Endowment's Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC) Initiative is a four-year strategic grant making program focused on reducing disparities in obesity and diabetes by improving food and physical activity environments for school age children. Evaluation, which plays a central role in the HEAC initiative, is participatory and multi-level to capture change across five sectors: schools, after-school, neighborhoods, health care, and marketing and advertising. The on-going HEAC evaluation demonstrates the impact of community-level chronic disease prevention approaches while contributing to the pool of evidence linking an environmental approach to healthy eating and active living outcomes. The HEAC evaluation baseline data collection served a dual purpose: one, to describe the HEAC communities prior to the implementation of interventions, and two, to help grantees refine their intervention plans by clearly identifying the issues and areas to address with environmental change strategies This panel will describe findings from a number of HEAC baseline evaluation efforts including: findings from environmental assessments of the food and physical activity resources available in the six HEAC communities; results from a self-administered survey of 7th and 9th graders on their nutrition and physical activity attitudes and behaviors; results from assessments of physical activity levels in physical education classes, findings from the HEAC community resident survey on support for policy strategies to change nutrition and physical activity environments, and assessments of the health care sector's role in advocating for community change and how current clinical practice incorporates promotion of healthy eating and physical activity.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will be able to

• Describe a number of methods for evaluating environmental change interventions to promote healthy eating and physical activity.
• Describe the key environmental elements to assess in evaluations of programs aimed at changing food and physical activity environments.
• Discuss how baseline evaluation data can help inform program strategies.

Keywords: Nutrition, Physical Activity

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation