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Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: High rates of childhood obesity are concentrated in the Southeastern US among resource-limited states such as Mississippi, which has an overweight/obesity rate of 41% among students in grades K-12. Yet—as First Lady Michelle Obama highlighted during her trip to Mississippi in February 2012—the state significant efforts to reduce childhood obesity has resulted in a 13% decline from 2005 to 2011. Among these efforts is promoting health literacy at an early age so that children are equipped to make smart health choices that can be carried into adulthood. A key way to accomplish this is by engaging schools in health education programs like those at HealthWorks! North Mississippi (HW!). An interactive children’s health education center, HW!’s mission is to improve health literacy by, “infectiously contaminating kids of all ages, everywhere, to learn, have fun, and make great life choices” (http://www.healthworkskidsms.org). One way HW! fulfills this mission is by delivering health education programs such as Be a Food Groupie (BAFG) to rural elementary students during HW! field trips. We conducted an evaluation in order to answer the following research question: Do students who participate in BAFG demonstrate gains in health knowledge? Our benchmark for success was that 60% of ‘intervention’ students would have improved post-test scores after participating in BAFG.
Methods: In Fall 2012, we recruited 11 schools to participate in the BAFG evaluation, which used a constructed matched comparison group design of intervention and control school dyads. Schools were matched according to percentage of students at poverty level, percentage of minority students, and language proficiency scores (low, medium, or high proficiency). Approximately 900 multi-ethnic students in grades 3-5 participated in pre-tests, post-tests, and BAFG field trips. Intervention students received the pre-test, BAFG field trip, and post-test. Control students received the pre-test, post-test, and BAFG field trip.
Results: Preliminary results from 3 school dyads (N=535) indicate intervention students (n=265) demonstrated significantly higher increases in scores from pre-test to post-test (M = 15.57, SD = 13.25) versus control students (n=270) (M = 2.76, SD = 21.67). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was calculated on difference in test score and yielded significant results, F(1,154)=20.272, p=0.00, r=.34. Eighty percent of intervention students had improved scores from pre-test to post-test versus 53% of control students (p=0.00). After controlling for language proficiency—which is associated with doing well on tests—we found intervention students remained significant more likely to show improve scores as follows: low proficiency (p=0.00); medium proficiency (p=0.00); high proficiency (p=0.05).
Conclusions: These preliminary results suggest that participating in BAFG positively impacted health literacy among 80% of intervention students, which exceeded our success benchmark of 60%.
Implications for research and/or practice: Although some children’s museums and science education center have developed programs to promote children’s health literacy, “studies examining whether provision of health education in these venues increases knowledge or changes behavior are lacking” (Freeman, 2010). Our result help fill this critical gap by providing evidence of the effectiveness of BAFG on children’s health literacy.