Using the Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) to assess barriers to healthy eating and active living in a low-income community

Kelly R. Ylitalo, M.Renée Umstattd Meyer, Kahler Stone, Eva I. Doyle and Ramona Curtis

Evaluation and Program Planning, 2016, vol. 59, issue C, 41-46

Abstract: Insufficient physical activity and unhealthy eating behaviors are major contributors to the obesity epidemic in the United States. Identifying health behaviors and disparities in underserved communities is needed to guide the development of targeted interventions. The Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) is a set of tools designed for public health emergencies, but the utility of CASPER in non-emergency settings has not been explored. The purpose of this study was to use CASPER to obtain information on household-based behaviors of and barriers to fruit/vegetable consumption and physical activity, and explore the utility of these methods for future health assessments. Cross-sectional survey data included households (n=100) in a low-income neighborhood. Half of adults did not meet recommendations for fruit/vegetable consumption and 20% reported no physical activity during the previous week. Cost was significantly associated with healthy eating and physical activity in our community. Four primary advantages of using CASPER methodology included a user-friendly CDC toolkit, yield of a representative community sample with a relatively low sample size, low-cost/low-tech requirements for implementation, and the strengthening of an academic-practice-community partnership. Our work demonstrates the utility of CASPER for assessing healthy living in a geographically-defined community where household health behaviors and barriers are unknown.

Keywords: Healthy eating; Physical activity; Obesity; Community assessment for public health emergency response (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149718916300921
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:epplan:v:59:y:2016:i:c:p:41-46

DOI: 10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2016.08.003

Access Statistics for this article

Evaluation and Program Planning is currently edited by Jonathan A. Morell

More articles in Evaluation and Program Planning from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().