School Based Intervention

The above article outlines school based interventions and tries to assess if they are both cost and clinically effective in the prevention of childhood obesity, compared to normal everyday practice. This study followed 54 primary schools in the West Midlands, UK. These schools were picked at random and included multi-ethic/socioeconomically diverse populations between the ages of 6-7 years old. During the twelve month period the main intervention consisted of eating a healthy diet and promoting more physical activity. Activates included cooking workshops, interactive learning activities in both physical and healthy eating habits. The first area measured were BMI and arms sizes at 3 months and 18 months post intervention for the clinical outcome. The second area measured was the Cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY). The sample size was about 1000 children across 50 schools.

Reasons this study was initiated was because of the ever increasing issue of childhood obesity. This problem is becoming a larger and larger problem worldwide due to poor eating habits and issues with ability and education on healthy eating and proper exercise. It has been supported that children as young as 7 years old who are obese, have a higher risk of premature death as

Schools were picked at random whether to implement the physical activity and healthy eating or not to implement it. The study was geared to look at all races, including minority groups; Caucasian, south Asian, African, Caribbean, and other categories check to ensure a proper coverage, schools with a higher mixed race were more likely to be sampled. Socio-economic make-up of students were check by finding the number of students of each school that were eligible for free school meals. Schools were excluded from the sample if they had less than 17 students or lacked proper education