PC1160: Expanding Health Education and Obesity Prevention Programing Options from the Classroom to the Home

Background:

Background: Children's health and wellbeing is influenced by a variety of factors, which is why early childhood health promotion and education programming is crucial to ensuring lifelong health and preventing obesity. However, accessibility to these programs has been a longstanding issue.

Objective: To improve accessibility to health education programming. First

Aim: Maintain accessibility of the health education program, Healthy LifeStars (HLS), during COVID-19. Second

Aim: Expand HLS’s continuum of programming options.

Methods: HLS, a national nonprofit aiming to prevent childhood obesity, utilizes evidence-based programming that teaches nutrition, physical activity, and goal setting concepts. Before COVID-19, HLS exclusively used in-person, classroom-based programming limiting the accessibility of the program to those attending specific child serving organizations. However, when the pandemic occurred, HLS developed video lessons (an adaptation of their in-person curriculum) to maintain connection with partnering child serving organizations. To expand programming beyond child serving organizations, HLS created an online, interactive program, HLS At Home, that pulled all their developed resources together including the video lessons, worksheets, recipes, and more. The new HLS At Home program solves the existing access problem by providing the program to anyone via the internet. HLS At Home also expands the intervention population by targeting families.

Results: In the Fall of 2018, HLS was piloted in Iowa and over the last four years has grown to serve 4,467 kids in 29 schools across the state of Iowa, which includes both in person and virtual programming settings. Prior to COVID-19, HLS served 1,959 children in 18 schools. Evaluation done on in-person programming after the first year showed an increase in knowledge. In March 2020, COVID-19 stalled program expansion and limited active HLS sites. The development of video lessons and additional mitigation strategies allowed programming to continue in child serving organizations between March 2020 and April 2022. The HLS At Home program is currently being piloted across the state of Iowa.

Conclusion: There are benefits to utilizing both classroom and home-based HLS programming models. Classroom-based programming is student-centered, flexible to the needs of the partner organization, and provides direct contact with HLS volunteers/staff. HLS at Home program focuses on families, uses all HLS resources consistently, and allows additional individuals to be involved, including providers who can track patient progress in the program. The expansion of programming options enables Healthy LifeStars to target obesity prevention from multiple angles and increases impact by widening accessibility.