Evaluation Strategy for School Based Nutrtition and Physical Activity Obesity Prevention Environmental Change

Background: Suburban Cook County Illinois received funding for an obesity prevention policy, systems and environment (PSE) change project through the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) program administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Purpose: The project focuses on evaluation of school policy, systems and environmental changes to promote healthy vending and increasing physical activity (PA) in the school day. Both these intervention areas include a variety of policy, systems and environmental change strategies. For example healthy vending strategies may include decreasing "unhealthy" items available in vending, lowering prices of "healthy" items, and or changing access or availability rules. Adding PA to the school day may include initiating or extending recess, adding activity breaks to classroom settings, professional development for PE staff, extending PE class time and or revising PE curricula.

Significance: The project provides in-depth multi-level evaluation tied to a large national investment in obesity prevention policy.

Methodology: The evaluation tracks environmental and student level behavior changes for multiple vending and school day PA strategies as well as a sample of demographically similar comparison schools. Data collection includes environmental (food access/pricing and access to PA time/space) and student behavioral (food intake, PA time) measures.

Findings/Results: The presentation will describe the range of policy, systems and environmental changes engaged in, share an innovative evaluation strategy and its tools and present baseline evaluation data.

Recommendations: Multi-level methods are needed to capture environmental and behavioral change leading to health outcome changes in school settings.