Results of a successful, replicable, classroom-based wellness model

The Mississippi Alliance for Self-Sufficiency, The OrganWise Guys Incorporated, and the ILSI Center for Health Promotion collaborated with cooperative extension agents and elementary schools in the Delta Regions of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas to improve children's health via a school-based, curriculum-linked, replicable model.

The Delta H.O.P.E. Tri-State Initiative (HOPE) supported the implementation and evaluation of a classroom-based intervention that: 1) presented a cast of fun characters that teach young children physiology and lifelong healthy behaviors and 2) encouraged short bouts of physical activity integrated with academic lessons. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation funded this four-year project (2003 – 2007) that targeted 30,000 low-income students.

The HOPE model addressed the risk factors for obesity by meeting children where they spend a majority of their day….in the classroom and by making the academic day a forum through which to weave good nutrition and physical activity habits for a lifetime.

Results of the BMI analysis (N=1,400) found the following:

• Between 2005 and 2007, the percentage of students in the obese category declined from 24.43% to 20.24%.

• In the baseline year (2005), 53.13% of students fell within the healthy weight category.

• In the final year (2007), 59.12% of students were within a healthy BMI for age percentile.

HOPE has garnered the Department of Health and Human Services' 2005 Innovation in Prevention Award and the Cooper Institute's Gold Award based on its evaluated success and its potential to help reduce childhood obesity. The program is successfully being replicated throughout the country