Active and Healthy Kids in Telemark - a School Based Health Promoting Intervention

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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The study examine possible changes in physical activity, nutrition, and psychosocial health following the intervention Active and Healthy Kids in Telemark. The intervention schools will received the intervention, whereas the control schools will continue as usual.

Detailed Description
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School based, health promoting interventions with focus on increase physical activity and improved nutrition seems to be a good solution to the challenges with low physical activity level, poor physical fitness, poor nutrition and psychosocial health challenges among children and adolescents. Low physical activity levels and physical fitness is recognized as one of the major public health challenges in the 21st century, and it negatively affects cognitive skills and academic performances. Providing school based health promoting interventions makes it easier to reach all children and adolescents regardless of social and cultural background, and hence reduce social inequalities in health.

Official Title
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Effects of a School Based Health Promoting Intervention With Physical Activity and Nutrition Among 8th Graders in Telemark

Conditions
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Academic Performance, Physical Fitness, Physical Activity, Nutrition

Intervention / Treatment
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* Behavioral: Activity and diet


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Pupil 8th grade Exclusion Criteria: Inadequate language skills to complete questionnaire

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 11 Years
Maximum Age: 14 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Prevention
Allocation: Non-Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: Activity and diet<br>Multi-component, holistic model with a) physical activity, b) nutrition, and c) psychosocial work. A: physical activity will be provided as a pedagogical tool in subjects Mathematics, Norwegian and English B: Focus on school meals and menus in school cafeteria C: Psychosocial work with focus on the associations between physical activity, nutrition and psychosocial health. Collaboration between schools and school health services | Behavioral: Activity and diet<br>* Physical activity: use of physical activity in theoretical subjects (3 x 30 min/week), physically active breaks (5 x 5 min/week), physical education (2 x 45 min/week) Nutrition: focus on school meals<br>|
| No Intervention: Control<br>Schools are required to perform teaching activities, school meals and school cafeteria menus as usual | |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Physical activity (counts per minute) | Objectively assessment of physical activity by accelerometer Actigraph GT3x | 4 days | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Physical fitness: Andersen test | Andersen test to measure endurance capacity, running test on 20 m track for 10 minutes. Number of metres ran during the 10 minutes is registered. | 10 minutes | 
| Physical fitness: standing long jump | Standing long jump to measure explosive strength. Each subject gets two trials. Longest trial is registered in cm. | 2 minutes | 
| Nutrition and diet: questionnaire | self-report through own-developed questionnaire (not standardised scale) | 5 minutes | 
| Health-related Quality of Life | KIDSCREEN-27 (unabbreviated name) is a 27 item self-report instrument for health-related quality of life in children and adolescents. Each item is scored on a Likert scale from 1 to 5. The scores of each item are clustered into five dimensions: Physical Well-Being, Psychological Well-Being, Autonomy & Parents, Peers & Social Support and School Environment. Each dimension, or subscale, is scored as Rasch scales (i.e., sum of item scores for each subscale, transform the raw sumscores into Rasch person parameter estimates and T-values according to the KIDSCREEN-27 manual (KIDSCREEN group Europe, 2006)). For all these dimensions, higher Rasch scores and T-scores indicate better quality of life according to that given dimension. | 10 minutes | 
| Academic performance: grades in subjects Norwegian, mathematics and English | Results from national tests which assess level of academic performance among the pupils | 45 minutes | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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School, Health, Academic performance, Physical activity