THE NUTRITIONAL STATUS, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND SCREEN TIME IN STUDENTS FROM 7-10 YEARS: AN INTERVENTION STUDY IN VITÓRIA-ES, BRAZIL

Abstract

Objective: Evaluating the effectiveness of a health education program on the nutritional status, level of physical activity and screen time in students aged 7-10 years. Methodology: This is an intervention study which was conducted with 215 children enrolled in two public schools, hereinafter called the intervention group (IG) and control group (CG). The data collection was performed before and after the intervention using the same protocols. The anthropometric measurements and information about lifestyle habits were collected in two schools in the beginning and ending of school period. At the Intervention school, eleven educational workshops were held on healthy eating and physical activity practice. Statistical tests were used to evaluate the differences between and within groups, p <0.05 and SPSS 18.0 program. Results: From all 215 students, 136 (63.3%) belonged to GI and 79 (36.7%) to the GC; most of them belonged to the socioeconomic class C and not white race/color. About a third of the students were overweight or obese at the initial time. At the end of the study, in both groups, there was a significant increase in weight, height, body mass index and waist circumference, although the overweight percentage has not increased. There was a significant reduction in screen time in GI (p <0.023) after intervention. Conclusion: Changes in the anthropometric measures are expected due to the moment in which children are, but health education program had a positive impact in preventing new cases of overweight and reducing the screen time. DOI: 10.12957/demetra.2016.22030

Keywords

• criança. estudos de intervenção. atividade motora. sobrepeso.