Project Healthy Schools: Community-University Collaboration to Prevent Childhood Obesity

In the last 30 years overweight children have nearly tripled and over 17% are classified as obese. Overweight children are 70% more likely to become overweight adults. This trend has led to an increase in heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes in adolescents. Project Healthy Schools (PHS) is a community-university collaborative providing school-based programming to reduce childhood obesity. We work with sixth grade students creating fun, interactive activities emphasizing five simple goals: Eat more fruits and vegetables; Make better beverage choices; Exercise at least 150 minutes each week; Eat less fast and fatty foods; Spend less time in front of TV /computer. The program includes 10 hands-on activities, motivational assemblies, incentives to reward behavior-change achievements,cafeteria and policy changes, and communication campaigns. Outcome measures include baseline/follow-up surveys of student eating habits and physical activity; student blog data; height/weight assessment and BMI; 3 minute step test; BP; finger-stick cholesterol panel and random blood glucose measure. A unique feature to sustain the project is the Health Ambassador Program (HAP). HAP includes university students providing PHS educational activities, working with schools to help them change their environment and policy, and assisting with data collection. A monthly seminar series connects these future community leaders to health-related programs and leaders from the community and university. Data from 3 years of screenings, 978 students, will be presented. Results indicate significant decrease in total and LDL cholesterol, and glucose measures year one and two and an increase in student fruit and vegetable choices.