1. Improvement in nutrition-related knowledge and behaviour of urban Asian Indian school children: findings from the 'Medical education for children/Adolescents for Realistic prevention of obesity and diabetes and for healthy aGeing' ( MARG) intervention study
- Author
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Atul Kulshreshta, Rekha Sharma, Nandita Hazra, Swati Bharadwaj, Nidhi Gupta, Ravindra Mohan Pandey, Priyali Shah, Sunil Bansal, Arun Gupta, Prasann Kumar Gangwar, Arvind Jain, D. K. Hazra, Payal Seth, Padmamalika Khanna, Rajeev Gupta, Indu Mohan, Rooma Bhargava, Anoop Misra, Anand Agarwal, Kashish Goel, Pooja Tallikoti, and Seema Gulati
- Subjects
Program evaluation ,Gerontology ,Male ,Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice ,Adolescent ,Nutrition Education ,education ,Health Behavior ,Medicine (miscellaneous) ,Developing country ,Child Behavior ,India ,Childhood obesity ,Sex Factors ,Intervention (counseling) ,Surveys and Questionnaires ,Diabetes Mellitus ,Medicine ,Humans ,Obesity ,Child ,Exercise ,Health Education ,Nutrition and Dietetics ,Schools ,business.industry ,Age Factors ,medicine.disease ,Diet ,El Niño ,Adolescent Behavior ,Government ,Health education ,Female ,business ,Program Evaluation - Abstract
Increasing prevalence of childhood obesity calls for comprehensive and cost-effective educative measures in developing countries such as India. School-based educative programmes greatly influence children's behaviour towards healthy living. We aimed to evaluate the impact of a school-based health and nutritional education programme on knowledge and behaviour of urban Asian Indian school children. Benchmark assessment of parents and teachers was also done. We educated 40 196 children (aged 8–18 years), 25 000 parents and 1500 teachers about health, nutrition, physical activity, non-communicable diseases and healthy cooking practices in three cities of North India. A pre-tested questionnaire was used to assess randomly selected 3128 children, 2241 parents and 841 teachers before intervention and 2329 children after intervention. Low baseline knowledge and behaviour scores were reported in 75–94 % government and 48–78 % private school children, across all age groups. A small proportion of government school children gave correct answers about protein (14–17 %), carbohydrates (25–27 %) and saturated fats (18–32 %). Private school children, parents and teachers performed significantly better than government school subjects (P P P
- Published
- 2010