The Cost Effectiveness of Educating Limited Resource Youths on Food and Nutrition

Ranju Baral, George Davis, Elena Serrano, Mary McFerren and Wen You

No 150221, 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: A framework for estimating cost effectiveness of the youth Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), one of the largest nutrition education programs in the US, is developed. Using costs and effects data from 15 program counties in Virginia for the school year 2011/2012, the cost effectiveness ratio (CER) of the Healthy Weights for Healthy Kids (HWHK) program was estimated. Improvements in nutrition related behavior, and improvements in nutrition related self-efficacy, from pretest to posttest, were considered as two indicators of program effects. Direct costs associated with the provision of the HWHK program were considered program costs. The total cost of the program was estimated to be $134,333 for one year. Among 1,864 participants, 1,786 improved in behavior indicators and 1,782 improved in self-efficacy indicators. The estimated CER is about $75 per improvement for each outcome indicator. Cross county comparisons reveal a wide variation in CER estimates across counties. The results from this study provide the first piece of information on the CER for youth EFNEP which quantify the effects of investment on youth EFNEP program in Virginia in achieving the stated program objectives.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Institutional and Behavioral Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/150221/files/Baral_et%20al_AAEA%202013.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea13:150221

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.150221

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().