The Green (Growing Right: Eating Eco-Friendly and Nutritious) Project

描述（由申请人提供）：儿童饮食质量差会导致肥胖、慢性疾病和生活质量下降。许多努力都集中在学校提供的食物上。但是小学生经常带零食和午餐。很少有人关注改善从家里带来的食物的营养成分。拟议的干预措施，绿色（生长权利：饮食环保和营养）项目，利用健康饮食和环保行为之间的自然协同作用，解决从家里带到学校的食物质量问题。我们新颖的、以学校为基础的宣传活动将把食物的营养和环保品质结合起来。我们的目标人群是马萨诸塞州东部的三、四年级学生和他们的看护人。我们的中心假设是，在一个学年结束时，接受健康饮食和环保信息相结合的活动的孩子，在饮食质量和从家里带来的零食和午餐的生态友好性方面，比单独接受健康饮食宣传的孩子或对照组的孩子表现出更大的改善。以理论为基础的多渠道传播活动将在对目标人群进行定性研究的基础上发展。在这项活动中，学校将被随机分配到三种条件下，接受：(1)健康饮食和环保信息；(2)健康饮食信息；或(3)作为对照后延迟健康饮食环保信息。最主要的结果是学校提供的水果和蔬菜的数量发生了变化。次要后果将包括含糖饮料和加工高能量食品的数量变化，以及与从家里带来的食物有关的垃圾重量的变化。将使用数码摄影对这些结果进行基线和结果评估。“环保计划”实施后，“再评估目标”框架会对干预措施作出修订，然后分发给延迟干预的组别。这个设计将提供一个机会来测试复制的可行性。如果成功的话，这种利用健康饮食和环保信息之间协同作用的新方法可以推广到美国的小学，并适用于其他人群。此外，该策略可能会扩展到影响个人健康的其他行为，这些行为可以与环保行为联系起来。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Poor diet quality in children contributes to obesity, chronic disease, and diminished quality of life. Many efforts have focused on foods provided in schools. But elementary school children regularly bring snacks and lunches. Little attention has been directed toward improving the nutrient profiles of foods brought from home. The proposed intervention, The GREEN (Growing Right: Eating Eco-friendly and Nutritious) Project takes advantage of a natural synergy between healthy eating and eco-friendly behaviors to address the quality of foods brought to school from home. Our novel, school-based communications campaign will combine messages about the nutritional and eco-friendly qualities of foods. Our target population is third and fourth graders and their caregivers in Eastern Massachusetts. Our central hypothesis is that at the end of one school year, children who receive a campaign with combined healthy eating and eco-friendly messages will show greater improvement in diet quality and eco-friendliness of snacks and lunches brought from home than those who receive healthy eating communications alone or those in a control group. The theory-based multi-channel communications campaign will be developed on the basis of qualitative research with the target population. For the campaign, schools will be randomized to three conditions to receive: (1) healthy eating and eco-friendly messages; (2) healthy eating only messages; or (3) delayed healthy eating eco-friendly messages after serving as controls. The primary outcome is change in the number of servings of fruits and vegetables brought to school. Secondary outcomes will include changes in the quantity of sugar-sweetened beverages and processed, energy-dense foods, as well as the weight of trash associated with foods brought from home. Baseline and outcome assessments of these outcomes will be made using digital photography. After the GREEN Project has been implemented, the RE-AIM framework will be used to make revisions to the intervention which will then be disseminated to the delayed intervention group. This design will provide an opportunity to test the feasibility of replication. If successful, this novel approach, taking advantage of the synergy between healthy eating and eco-friendly messages, could be extended to elementary schools across the US and adapted to other populations. In addition, the strategy might be extended to other behaviors affecting personal health that can be tied to eco-friendly behaviors. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Poor diet quality in children in the United States contributes to obesity, chronic disease, and diminished quality of life. Our innovative school-based nutrition communication campaign, which combines the synergies of healthy eating and eco-friendly behaviors addresses the quality of foods third and fourth graders bring to school from home. If successful, the communication strategy we will employ will contribute to improving dietary quality among school-children, thus improving their quality of life.