Effectiveness of the “Planning Health in School” Programme on Children’s Nutritional Status

Margarida Vieira, Andreia Teixeira and Graça S. Carvalho
Additional contact information
Margarida Vieira: Research Centre on Child Studies, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal
Andreia Teixeira: Department of Community Medicine, Information and Decision in Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, 4200-319 Porto, Portugal
Graça S. Carvalho: Research Centre on Child Studies, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 23, 1-13

Abstract: Effective interventions for guiding children to change behaviours are needed to tackle obesity. We evaluated the effectiveness of the ‘Planning Health in School’ programme (PHS-pro) on children’s nutritional status. A non-randomised control group pretest-posttest trial was conducted at elementary schools of a sub-urban municipality in Porto’s metropolitan area (Portugal). A total of 504 children of grade-6, aged 10–14, were assigned in two groups: children of one school as the intervention group (IG), and three schools as the control group (CG). Anthropometric measures included height, weight, waist circumference (WC), BMI and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), and lifestyle behaviours (self-reported questionnaire) were assessed at baseline and after PHS-pro. IG children grew significantly taller more than CG ones ( p < 0.001). WC had reduced significantly in IG (−0.4 cm) whereas in the CG had increased (+0.3 cm; p = 0.015), and WHtR of IG showed a significant reduction ( p = 0.002) compared with CG. After PHS-pro, IG children consumed significantly fewer soft drinks ( p = 0.043) and ate more fruit and vegetables daily than CG. Physical activity time increased significantly in IG ( p = 0.022), while CG maintained the same activity level. The PHS-pro did improve anthropometric outcomes effectively leading to better nutritional status and appears to be promising in reducing overweight and obesity.

Keywords: obesity prevention; school-based intervention; nutritional status; eating behaviour; physical activity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12846/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12846/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:23:p:12846-:d:695974

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().