Effect of the Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters “Healthy You” program on improving child and parent/guardian health knowledge and behaviors

Purpose: To evaluate the Children of the King's Daughter (CHKD) “Healthy You” program.

Materials and Methods: This investigation was a retrospective cohort study evaluating program participants from August 2002 through December 2005. The researcher used paired t-tests to evaluate pre and post-program knowledge assessment, BMI, and health assessment scores. One-way and factorial ANOVA, along with other methods under the general logistic regression model, were used to evaluate the statistical significance of the data and identify confounding and interactive factors.

Results: Child knowledge assessment scores increased by 64% over the course of the program, independent of all potential confounding factors. Adult knowledge assessment scores increased from 7.89 to 10.5 (mean +2.49), but showed a minimal but consistent increase as income level increased. Mean BMI scores decreased from 34.9 to 34.0 with a mean change of 0.4 (-1.2%), independent of all potential confounding factors. Mean behavior scores increased 28% (mean +6.64) with discrepancies in both race and program length. Chi-square analysis revealed a direct association between behavior score change and BMI loss (p-value <0.001).

Conclusions: Participants in the program reduced their BMI scores and demonstrated an increase in health knowledge over the course of the program. There was also a strong association between BMI loss and overall behavior score change. However, several problems, including lack of a control group and no systematic long-term tracking of program participants prevented long-term evaluation. Also, because overall health habit scores were self-reported (parents reporting on their child's activities) there is the possibility of reporting bias.