Conducting evaluations of health promotion programs are imperative to determine the program’s impact and explore possible improvements in content and delivery. This study’s objective was to evaluate ...the effectiveness of CATCH program, delivered by dietetic interns and Northern Illinois University (NIU) students, to third through fifth graders in Northern Illinois, in increasing their nutrition knowledge and healthy choices behavior.
In total, 167 elementary school children in grades third through fifth in Northern Illinois participated in a non-experimental program evaluation study. We delivered six CATCH lessons throughout the academic year to five elementary schools. Lessons were focused on ‘Go, Slow, Whoa’ food categories to help children understand healthier food choices. Validated questionnaires from the CATCH Global Foundation were administered in classrooms and online pre- and post-intervention to assess nutritional knowledge and healthy choices behavior.
Children in third through fifth grades significantly increased their knowledge about nutrient-dense foods (P < .001 for each grade). Fourth and fifth graders exhibited a significant increase in their ability to make healthier food choices, P = .03 and P = .007 respectively. As grade level increased from third to fifth grade, improvement in nutrition knowledge and adoption of healthy food choices did not increase significantly; third to fourth grade, P = .973 and fourth to fifth grade, P = .637.
We conclude that children in grades third through fifth who participated in the six lessons of the CATCH program expanded their nutritional knowledge and improved their ability to make healthier choices. This study demonstrates the potential benefits of communiversity collaborations for nutrition education in schools. However, higher grades did not show a greater increase in knowledge or more improvement in making healthy choices than lower grades. Future research should examine the same cohort of children over three years of participation to determine the accumulation of knowledge and behavior improvement.
Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Health Center in DeKalb, IL and Northern Illinois University provided funds to procure supplies and cover printing cost of evaluation surveys.
Nutritional anthropologists today are challenged not simply to report on particularities of dietary habits and food production, distribution, and belief systems, but to place our interpretations of ...food behaviors, diets, and nutritional outcomes within a global context. Anthropologists are skilled in formative research, which is needed in food and nutrition studies but often goes unstudied by policy makers and program developers. When secondary data are used in nutritional anthropology’s ethnographic and formative research, the outcomes become better situated in the literature for translation into eff ective food and nutrition policies, interventions, and programs (Bentley, Johnson, Wasser et al. 2014). Skillful
The nutritional anthropologist develops research problems within the context of existing food, nutrition, agricultural, ecological, socioeconomic, and health data. Whether planning a rapid assessment ...of nutritional deficiencies in a village, a study of urban food deserts in ethnic neighborhoods, or an exploration of immigrant children’s dietary patterns and food preferences, a researcher will need to inform, place, and interpret the research in the context of the social, demographic, and economic structures and patterns of the community, region, political entity, state, or globalized market. By doing so the nutritional anthropologist helps meet the needs of globalized communities, allowing others to ascertain
Food health Chrzan, Janet; Brett, John
2017., 2017, 2017-02-28, Letnik:
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eBook
Nutritional Anthropology and public health research and programming have employed similar methodologies for decades many anthropologists are public health practitioners while many public health ...practitioners have been trained as medical or biological anthropologists. Recognizing such professional connections, this volume provides in-depth analysis and comprehensive review of methods necessary to design, plan, implement and analyze public health programming using anthropological best practices. To illustrates the rationale for use of particular methods, each chapter elaborates a case study from the author's own work, showing why particular methods were adopted in each case. This volume provides in-depth analysis and comprehensive review of methods necessary to design, plan, implement and analyze public health programming related to food and nutrition using anthropological best practices.
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