Effectiveness of Targeted Educational Intervention on Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors in Serbian Population
Condition: Behavior
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The overall idea to be evaluated in this project is that educational activities providing
      top-notch knowledge on diet and physical activity may represent an additional benefit to the
      strategies aimed at decreasing lifestyle diseases in Serbian population of both young and
      mature age. The specific objectives of this project are:

        1. to develop user-friendly guidelines for physical activity and nutrition for two age
           group cohorts (K-12 and adults) of Serbia residents;

        2. to provide a brief educational intervention about nutrition and healthy lifestyles at
           school or work settings in each age group;

        3. to determine if an educational intervention would yield an additional benefit in the
           acquisition of knowledge on nutrition and physical activity;

        4. to promote and disseminate project results using popular media, non-professional and
           professional bodies and relevant events.
    

Detailed description: 
      In the first stage of the project, investigators will recruit national experts from academia
      and governmental bodies to develop distinctive user-friendly guidelines on nutrition and
      physical activity based on gold-standard recommendations currently available, from the US
      Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization, American College of
      Sports Medicine and American Heart Association. Intended for general public, two laymen
      guidelines will be produced, each for a specific age group (K-12 and adults), with both
      documents outline how people can improve their overall eating patterns and how children and
      adults can improve their health through physical activity. For the second stage, ~ 2.000
      participants (a nationally representative sample of K-12 and adult age group) will
      participate in a tailored educational intervention delivered by CHESS experts (health
      professional and physical education teachers), with a summary of above layman reports
      delivered to recruited participants via 50 oral sessions. Both groups will complete pre- and
      post-intervention questionnaires of the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile (HPLS) and
      Short-Form Health Survey, standard easy-to-administer questionnaires that measure
      health-promoting lifestyle knowledge in different scales. In the third phase, investigators
      will compare the effectiveness of targeted health-promoting education, comparing
      pre-intervention vs. post-intervention (at 3 months) HPLS total scores. Collected data will
      be organized in nationally recognized Open Access database, with descriptive information on
      all relevant outcomes presented in user-friendly electronic format for whole sample and each
      age-specific sub-population. Finally, both guidelines on nutrition and physical activity, and
      the outcomes on educational intervention to promote healthy lifestyles among K-12 and adult
      population will be further disseminated:

        1. to general public through media, conferences and Layman's report;

        2. to interested and relevant stakeholders in the field of health, education and sport
           through overview in brief memorandum; and

        3. to professional bodies and groups through interactive meetings and workshops.

      Finally, the results will be further disseminated at relevant conferences, e-media and
      journal papers.
    

Intervention name(s): Education
Intervention type(s): Other
Intervention description(s): Educational intervention
Intervention model: Single Group Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Other