The Process of Integrating an Evidence-Based Intervention into a Public Health Department to Improve Nutrition and Physical Activity Behaviors in Parents and Children

Involvement of Local Health Departments in Obesity Prevention: A Scoping Review

INTRODUCTION

Local health department (LHD) obesity prevention (OP) efforts, particularly by rural LHDs, are seemingly uncommon, in part, due to limited infrastructure, workforce capacity, accessible data, and available population-level interventions aimed at social determinants of health (SDOH).

METHODS

We conducted a scoping review to determine LHD roles in OP efforts and interventions. Inclusion criteria were articles including evidence-based OP and LHD leaders or staff. Articles were coded by type of LHD involvement, data use, intervention characteristics, use of an SDOH lens, and urban or rural setting.

RESULTS

We found 154 articles on LHD OP-52 articles met inclusion criteria. Typically, LHDs engaged in only surveillance, initial intervention development, or evaluation and were not LHD led. Data and SDOH lens use were infrequent, and interventions typically took place in urban settings.

CONCLUSION

LHDs could likely play a greater role in OP and population-level interventions and use data in intervention decision making. However, literature is limited. Future research should focus on LHD capacity building, including academic-public health partnerships. Studies should include rural populations, data, and SDOH frameworks addressing "upstream" factors.

Healthy Lifestyle and Academic Performance in Middle School Students from the Region of Aragón (Spain)

A healthy lifestyle is important to the present and future development and health of school age people. This study aims to analyze the relationship between daily lifestyle habits and academic performance in a sample of adolescents from the autonomous community of Aragon (Spain). We performed a cross-sectional study to analyze the lifestyle habits and academic performance of a total of 1745 7th and 8th grade middle school students during the academic year 2018-2019; the participants were selected from a random sample of 43 middle schools from the region of Aragon. The following data were collected through an anonymized, previously validated questionnaire: diet, sleep, physical activity, use of screens, use of toxic substances, and academic performance. We found a statistically significant association between all the lifestyle habits analyzed and academic performance (p < 0.001) in our sample. Based on our findings, we suggest that health promotion and education in healthy lifestyles should be integrated in middle school curricula to improve academic performance and, more importantly, to promote both present and future health outcomes of adolescents.