Twelve year follow-up of a school-based health education programme

Abstract

The Oslo Youth Study (1979–1981) was designed to evaluate the impact of a school-based health education programme targeting students' eating patterns, physical activity levels and cigarette smoking. The study was implemented with participants from 6 combined elementary and junior high schools, half of whom received the educational programme. In the autumn of 1991, students enrolled as part of the Oslo Youth Study grade cohorts in 1981 were invited to participate in a follow-up study. The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential long-term impact of the Oslo Youth Study health education programme. A total of 711 subjects completed a questionnaire in 1991 (an overall participation rate of 75.1%). Analysing the cross-sectional data obtained in 1991, we observed no overall long-term positive impact of either the smoking, nutrition or physical education programmes. Among the 1979–1991 cohort participants, we found that subjects exposed to the educational programme reported a significantly higher prevalence of regular vigorous exercise than did subjects from comparison schools (49 versus 40%; p=0.01). No similar effect was seen with smoking or eating behaviour. The results from this 12 year follow-up study seem to confirm findings from previous studies indicating that school-based education can have a positive short-term impact on health-related behaviours, but that these effects tend to disappear over time.