Hermosa Vida: A community and school-focused childhood obesity prevention program

This session will describe the development and implementation of Hermosa Vida (A Beautiful Life), a childhood obesity community prevention project led by a community health center (CHC) to address a significant problem in a low income, racially and ethnically diverse community. Unique features of this project include leadership from a CHC but taking a public health approach to the problem, and the use of a community-based approach incorporating a rapid assessment methodology called RARE (Rapid Assessment Research and Evaluation) that has been popularized in international HIV work. The CHC leaders recruited an interdisciplinary steering committee including representatives from the neighborhood association, the county health department, the city parks department, the local hospital, and anthropologists from the local university. The committee used results from the RARE assessment to organize a multi-faceted intervention plan primarily focused on the neighborhood grade school with local leadership provided by a community health worker and community organizer hired for the project, along with involvement from all the stakeholders represented on the steering committee and the principal and nurse from the school. In the presentation, we will discuss the development of the pilot project and steering committee, findings from the RARE evaluation and how they, together with evidence based practices, influenced the demonstration project proposal, the inclusion of a community health worker and organizer, and the variety of activities initiated in the first year of the implementation phase.