Session: Transdisciplinary and Multi-Institution Collaboration to Address Childhood Obesity in Afterschool Settings (Society for Prevention Research 23rd Annual Meeting)

SESSION INTRODUCTION: Our goal is to present a transdisciplinary university-community collaboration to develop, evaluate, and disseminate evidence-based programs and practices for youth obesity prevention. We will highlight the importance of rigorous evaluation but also the critical role of evaluation in driving program improvement. We also will illustrate how institutional partnerships have the power to transform prevention programs. 

Childhood obesity is one of the most critical public health challenges in recent history. Yet, early life intervention strategies have demonstrated limited success. Many programs are simply too narrow, focused on nutrition knowledge alone, which rarely leads to behavior change. Researchers have asserted that prevention must emphasize skill development, such as meal planning and basic food preparation, in addition to nutrition knowledge. Overall, there is a dearth of quality, rigorous evaluation of programs, particularly theoretically driven, comprehensive evaluation that illuminates sociodemographic moderators and key levers of behavior change.

Researchers from the Center for Solutions Through Research in Diet and Exercise (STRIDE) at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) and Vanderbilt University

have partnered in an attempt to address the paucity of quality evaluation. Based on local needs, also reflected nationally, STRIDE developed a nutrition education and culinary skills program targeting middle-school aged youth to increase their nutrition knowledge, culinary self-efficacy and skills, and healthy behaviors. We have developed standardized mixed-methods process and outcome protocols that are being used across multiple sites.

In this symposium, we present three papers describing evaluation findings and their use in program improvement. The first paper describes analytical findings from evaluation of a nutrition education and culinary skills curriculum implemented over several years in California.

The second paper adds a qualitative perspective of program outcomes by exploring the perspectives of the youth participants and their parents collected in brief interviews after program completion. The interviews explored their views of the program as well as barriers and facilitators to nutrition-related changes that occur outside of the program. We will discuss the process of planning and collecting this feedback as well as how this feedback will directly inform future implementation of the PDC program for new cohorts.

The third paper demonstrates how collaborative evaluation findings can be utilized to drive program improvement leveraging resources outside the institution that developed the program.

Following the paper presentations, the discussant will outline common themes, emerging issues linking this research and the existing literature, and facilitate an interactive discussion with the presenters and session attendees.