Publications
Personalizing the Dietary Guidelines: use of a feedback report to help adolescent students plan health behaviors using a SMART goal approach
School health curricula should help students choose health goals related to the Dietary Guidelines (DG) recommendations addressing obesity. We aimed to identify characteristics associated with choice of DG recommendation items.
In 12 HealthCorps affiliated high schools, students completed a 19-item web-based questionnaire that provided a personalized health-behavior feedback report to guide setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, Time-bound) goals. We examined if gender, weight-status, and personalized feedback report messages were related to student-selected SMART Goals.
Female overweight/obese and obese student had a significant decrease in BMI z-scores
HealthCorps female overweight/obese and obese student had a significant decrease in BMI z-scores (post-pre delta BMI z-score = −0.16 (95%CI = (−0.26, −0.05), p = 0.004 for the former; and = −0.23 (−0.44, −0.03), p = 0.028, for the latter) whereas comparison female counterparts did not.
The HealthCorps students, but not the comparison students, had a significant increase for all knowledge domains except for the breakfast realm, and reported a greater number of significant behavior changes including fruit and vegetable intake and physical activities.