271376 Engaging schools in the California Children's Power Play! Campaign evaluation: How to partner effectively with administrators, teachers, food service staff, and school nurses from low-resource schools

Monday, October 29, 2012

Kate McDevitt , Department of Pediatrics, Division of Child Development and Community Health, Network for a Healthy California—Children's Power Play! Campaign, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA
Kelley Thompson, MPH , Department of Pediatrics, Division of Child Development and Community Health, Network for a Healthy California—Children's Power Play! Campaign, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA
Steve Kempster, MSW , Children's Power Play! Campaign, California Department of Public Health, Sacramento, CA
Nila Rosen, MPH , Atkins Center for Weight and Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Angie Jo Keihner, MS , Network for a Healthy California, California Department of Public Health and Public Health Institute, Sacramento, CA
Jessica Capaldi , Network for a Healthy California - San Diego and Imperial Counties, University of California, San Diego, Simi Valley, CA
Background: The Network for a Healthy California—Children's Power Play! Campaign is a multi-channel, community-based social marketing initiative that targets ethnically diverse, low-income 9- to 11-year-old children and their families. Access to low resource elementary schools for health education is challenging given the competing academic priorities and limited resources.

Purpose: To train 4th and 5th teachers (N=85) to implement a 10-week Campaign intervention that focuses on changing attitudes and behaviors around the consumption of fruits and vegetables and engaging in physical activity among participating intervention students (N=2,500).

Significance: The Campaign intervention provides nutrition and physical activity education, which link to the California Content Standards, and opportunities in low resource schools, promoting healthier lifestyles and empowering children to make better choices.

Findings: Effectively engaging schools to conduct nutrition and physical activity education hinges upon generating enthusiasm, simple and appealing materials, activities that are easy to incorporate with little staff demand, and positive reinforcement and recognition. Examples of effective teacher training and intervention implementation as well as lessons learned will be shared from the California Children's Power Play! Campaign evaluation.

Conclusions: Schools want to promote healthy children, and need easy to use, free resources to expand and sustain health education in elementary schools.

Learning Areas:
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs

Learning Objectives:
1. Identify the key stakeholders in implementing successful school-wide health education in elementary schools. 2. Describe the most effective approaches to engage diverse elementary school staff and administrators in health education. 3. Discuss the synergy of health education components within elementary schools that optimize the promotion of healthy eating and active living.

Keywords: School-Based Programs, Evaluation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As the co-lead of the Children's Power Play! Campaign, I served as the program manager for our 2011/12 evaluation study. Over the last several years, I have built statewide and countywide partnerships to promote nutrition education, farm to school efforts, and best practices for empowering underserved youth. I completed a Child Welfare Fellowship from the University of Michigan School of Social Work, where my research focused on youth development and engagement.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3408.0: Healthy Weight and Healthy Eating in School