Abstract
Despite the rise in childhood obesity, there remains a paucity of evidence for effective interventions that engage children and parents sufficiently to make and sustain lifestyle behaviour change. The Healthy Lifestyles Programme (HeLP) is a school-located obesity prevention programme, which has been developed with teachers, families and healthcare professionals. The underpinning assumption in the development of HeLP was to take a relational approach to changing behaviour, building relationships with the schools, children and their families to create supportive environments for healthy lifestyle choices. Thus, HeLP was conceptualised as a complex intervention within a complex system and developed as a dynamic, evolving set of processes to support and motivate children towards healthy behaviours. The delivery methods used are highly interactive and encourage identification with and ownership of the healthy lifestyle messages so that the children are motivated to take them home to their parents and effect change within the family. We have good evidence that HeLP engages schools and children such that they want to participate in the Programme. Results from an exploratory trial showed that the Programme is feasible and acceptable and has the potential to change behaviours and affect weight status. This paper presents an overview of and recommendations arising from the conceptualization; development and evaluation of the Healthy Lifestyles Programme as part of a special issue focusing on novel approaches to the global problem of childhood obesity.
Highlights
Childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century [1].The problem is global and is steadily affecting many low- and middle-income countries, in urban settings
Data from England’s National Childhood Measurement Programme (NCMP) for 2012–2013 showed that 22.2% of children entering primary school were overweight or obese, rising to 33.3% when they leave primary school
In developing Healthy Lifestyles Programme (HeLP) we were mindful that the children themselves, if suffciently motivated, were a key resource in taking messages home to their families, encouraging their parents to attend activities and in affecting change at home, interactive drama was a delivery method we explored in the development of HeLP as it showed promise in promoting positive attitudes towards a number of health behaviours [31] and was a means of delivering a range of behaviour change techniques
Summary
Childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century [1]. The importance of the quality of the social relationships and the school as a social institution in promoting child health and wellbeing has long been advocated by Rutter [21] and subsequent research exploring the impact of more specific school and classroom characteristics which influence pupil engagement in learning and social development has shown that student progress is positively associated with good relationships between teachers and pupils, opportunities for pupil participation and responsibility and support structures for teachers [22,23,24,25] Despite this strong rationale for building trusting and supportive relationships at the level of the school, child and family in promoting child health and wellbeing, there has been a paucity of obesity prevention interventions that aim to positively affect relations within the school and within the family in addition to affecting individual level processes, such as improve knowledge and skills and modify norms [26]. We will present the phases and components of the resultant intervention and how each phase has been designed to maximize the engagement of families and be feasible and acceptable to schools and children
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