Reflections Regarding the Social Ecological Model to Address Obesity in Southern California Youth

Childhood overweight and obesity has been a significant public health concern in the United States for decades. School-based obesity prevention programs have been one strategy to address this issue. This article describes the implementation of a knowledge-based, healthy eating intervention delivered to 4th and 5th graders in a southern California school district. Trained graduate students implemented a nutrition education curriculum, consisting of three monthly lessons that would eventually be utilized and sustained by the schools’ Physical Education (PE) teachers in the following school year. As such, the intervention drew upon the Social Ecological Model (SEM) to describe how nutrition education could be implemented in a sustainable way to future generations of youth. Students were assessed on their knowledge and dietary behaviors at pre-test and after the final lesson. Students’ overall nutritional knowledge significantly increased from pre-test to post-test; however their self-reported eating behaviors (e.g., low fruit and vegetable consumption, and high consumption of chips, soda, and sweets) largely remained the same. Although the findings of this study were largely non-significant, we conclude that future interventions, which creatively address different levels of the target population’s environment, may have promise if they are sufficiently dosed.