Health Education & Behavior, Essay Example

Healthier Troops in a SNAP (2010), funded by the Sunflower Foundation is a program designed to increase physical activity and reduce obesity among at-risk people. It is an awareness-building, motivation and behavior modification framework focusing on children aged 0-18 in community and home setting. The above public health intervention framework has been selected by the author because childhood obesity is an urgent issue of the U.S. society. The correlation between obesity and risk of cardiovascular disease, respiratory dysfunction and diabetes, among other serious health conditions. The recommendations, frameworks and theoretical foundations of the program will be reviewed below.

SNAP Recommendations for Preventive Intervention

The program was administered by the Scouting Nutrition & Activity Program, based on three main concepts: delivering health education material for children by scout leaders, meeting policy changes implementation to support healthy lifestyles, and badge assignments created to encourage parental involvement and promote healthy activities. Based on an intervention plan to deliver health education sessions for Junior Girl Scouts during the meetings (lasting 30 to 90 minutes each) for a period of 4 months, the plan involved a well-designed rewarding system and badge assignments. The education plan focused on delivering health related information and behavior modification. The topics discussed during the meeting were: goal setting, self-monitoring, recreational physical activities involved in the program, suggestions for family meals and healthy snacks, as well as creating plans to reduce screen time and replace television with other meaningful recreational activities. Parental assistance was required, therefore, the impact of the health education when further than children’s behavior modification; it had an impact on family health outcomes as well.

Evidence Supporting the Efficiency of Intervention

Rosenkranznz, Behrens &  Dzewaltowski (2010) evaluated results of the intervention by monitoring health outcomes and behaviors among children and families involved. The key findings of the research showed an increase of time spent on physical activities during the meetings. While there were no significant changes in BMI were measured between the intervention and control groups during the observation period, in order to measure health behavior change, a follow-up study is likely to be needed. One of the most important findings of the study was that while there was a slight decrease of BMI among participating girl scouts, health education did not affect parents’ BMI. Therefore, while the intervention “resulted in

greater health promoting opportunities”, it had “no discernable impact on the behavioral influences of obesity in children and parents outside of troop meetings” (Rosenkranz et al.. 2010, p. 11).

While the thesis that SNAP would have an impact on lifestyle choices and health related behaviors was not confirmed by the study (Rosenkranz et al., 2010). This calls for a review of the program, implementation of home setting in intervention modules and possibly programs introduced outside of the meetings.

Social Theory Used in the Framework

Behavioral theory (Burke, Joseph, Pasick & Barker, 2009) was used to design the health promotion and intervention plan. According to Burke et al. (2009), social context theory is a more effective way of understanding health related behavior. However, it is likely that Bandura’s social cognitive theory (1998) would have resulted in a more effective intervention design as well. The authors also suggest that there is a multidirectional relationship between social context and the individual, therefore, assessing people’s and families’ “habitus” related to health would have been necessary to create an intervention plan that addresses not only health beliefs but barriers of change as well. It was noted in the study that a great proportion of the children were from families with low socio-economic status (Rosenkranz et al., 2010). assessing the social and cultural forces that influence individual health-related choices. The author of the current review also agrees that in this intervention plan, social context theory’s approach would have delivered more positive results.

Methodological Approach Used

The authors of the study used a group-randomized controlled trial design to measure health outcomes. The main variables analyzed were time spent on health promotion, physical activity during the meetings, healthy food accessibility and as outcomes, number of family meals and BMI were measured.

Three troops were allocated to intervention groups, while four groups were assigned to control groups. There was a significant difference between  mean values of parents’ socio-economic status, families’ parenting score and family cohesion between the control group and the intervention group, which has created a significant limitation of the reliability of the study. Further, the study did not measure children’s and parents’ health perception and health efficacy, which was another important limitation of the study.

ConclusionThe effectiveness of SNAP health promotion intervention has not been proven by the study, therefore, there is no sufficient evidence that it can be  – in the current form – utilized to change health related behaviors of children and families. It is recommended that the authors would rethink the design and implement some further modules taking into consideration the assumptions of Social Context theory related to health behavior influences and create an integrated intervention model that promotes individual and family health efficacy through education. The results should be measured through a longitudinal follow-up study on a larger sample.

References

Bandura, A. (1998) Health promotion from the perspective of social cognitive theory. Psychology and Health, 13, 623-649.

Burke, N., Rena, G., Pasicjk, R., and Barker, J. “Theorizing Social Context: Rethinking Behavioral Theory” Health Education & Behavior, Vol. 36 (Suppl. 1): 55S-70S (October 2009)

National Cancer Institute (2010) Healthier Troops in a SNAP (Scouting Nutrition & Activity Program). Retrieved from http://rtips.cancer.gov/rtips/programDetails.do?programId=2570231#content

Rosenkranz, R., Behrens, T.,  &  Dzewaltowski, D. (2010) A group-randomized controlled trial for health promotion in Girl Scouts: Healthier Troops in a SNAP (Scouting Nutrition & Activity Program). BMC Public Health 2010, 10:81