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The Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center To Implement Nutrition and Physical Acitivity Programs in New Haven Public Schools

With a two-year, $80,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, The Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center (PRC) is working with the New Haven Public School District to implement two innovative nutrition and physical activity programs developed for elementary school children, Nutrition Detectives and ABC for Fitness (see description below).  These programs aim to promote healthy lifestyle and reverse the trend of obesity among students and their families.  The nutrition education component, Nutrition Detectives, builds competency in food label interpretation and healthful food selection while the physical activity component, ABC (Activity Bursts in the Classroom) for Fitness incorporates brief bursts of activity in the classroom. The project also features parental education and community involvement.

Currently in its first year of funding, the PRC is working with the New Haven School District’s Wellness Committee to implement the programs in six (6) elementary schools in the district.  Plans for year two include expansion to include additional schools with the overall aim of implementing these programs district wide.  Year two of the project includes program evaluation so that revisions can be incorporated as the programs are implemented in additional schools. In addition to programmatic evaluation, relevant outcomes that will be incorporated into the evaluation plan include: nutrition “literacy” in children; fitness measures in children, dietary pattern in children/adults; physical activity level in children/adults; and BMI if possible.   The working group is currently focusing its efforts on the refinement of the Nutrition Detectives™ and ABC for Fitness™ training curriculum and programs to meet the needs of the New Haven elementary schools. 

The Nutrition Detectives™ is a novel nutrition education program that teaches elementary school aged children to make healthy food choices. The program will be taught by high school students/peer educators and begins with a slide show using cartoons and colorful images to convey some basic information about healthful eating, why it is challenging in the modern environment and culminates in a demonstration of how food packages can be deceptive.  Children are also taught how nutrition labels can be used to make better choices in nearly every food category.  The slide show is accompanied by several hands on demonstrations where children are taught to look for key ingredients, such as whole grains or partially hydrogenated oil, as they look for “Waldo” in the “Where’s Waldo?” game as created by Martin Hanford, and search thru grocery bags to identify which contains the most healthful food.

The overall objective of Nutrition Detectives™ is to empower children with the ability to make better food choices while still eating the foods they love.  For this to be achieved, the children must be able to influence the food choices their parents/guardians make in settings such as supermarkets and restaurants.   To this end, the schools will incorporate strategies to integrate the Nutrition Detectives™ program in the school environment and to facilitate and encourage parental involvement.  Posters and displays of food labels in the cafeteria and around the elementary schools will reinforce the lessons learned in the program sessions.

ABC for Fitness™ is designed to take the time that teachers spend each day getting restless children to settle down, or distracted students to concentrate, and convert this time into structured, productive bursts of supervised physical activity.  The program is designed to offer approximately 5 daily sessions of 6-minute bursts, adding up to a baseline level of 30 minutes of activity per day.  Each activity burst has three components: a warm-up, a core activity that increases breathing and heart rate, and a cool-down. Teachers can select from a menu of different options for each warm-up, core activity, and cool-down. This allows for variety of activities over the course of the day.  Parent/guardian materials related to ND and ABC for Fitness will be sent home to engage parents in the programs.  The engagement of Parent Teacher Organizations and school assemblies may also be employed to help engage parental involvement in the school programming.