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theses

Purpose of Project
Childhood obesity is a global epidemic that predisposes children to a lifetime of medical conditions, social problems, and increased medical costs. KidsFit is an established obesity prevention program developed by Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health to prevent childhood obesity. The purpose of this DNP project was to evaluate if the KidsFit Obesity prevention program was effective in increasing knowledge and behaviors relating to nutrition and exercise in Girl Scouts between the ages of 8 and 11. Through increased awareness of proper nutrition and positive health behavior changes, participants would be able to improve their overall health status.

Methodology
This DNP Project was a pilot intervention. The Girl Scouts attended a one-hour weekly meeting for six weeks where they learned about nutrition, reading food labels, portion sizes, healthier choices, and the importance of physical activity. A pre and posttest design was used to evaluate if the KidsFit Obesity Prevention Program was effective in increasing knowledge and behaviors relating to nutrition and exercise. Pedometers were also given to the Scouts to assess an improvement in physical activity. Descriptive statistics was used to compare aggregate mean scores of knowledge, healthy behaviors and physical activity from week 1 and week 6.

Results
The findings of this project demonstrated that children’s health knowledge, health behaviors and physical activity increased after the implementation of the KidsFit program. The Girl Scouts health knowledge increased from a pre intervention score of 71% to a post intervention test score of 88%. Healthy behaviors increased from a baseline score of 3.2 to a post intervention score of 3.4. The average number of steps increased from a baseline of 33, 487 to a post intervention of 40,832 after the KidsFit program was implemented.

Implications for Practice
The KidsFit program can be used in any practice or as a resource by providers when patients are identified as at risk for obesity. KidsFit has the potential to increase health knowledge and behaviors related to nutrition and exercise in children with diverse ethnicities and different socioeconomic backgrounds. Expanding the use of obesity prevention programs to small group community settings such as Girl Scouts will help more children benefit from the programs with peer and community support. This project can be the beginning steps to the potential expansion of this standardized childhood obesity prevention program with generalization for children at a local, county, state, and national levels.

ETD_10931

DNP

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-9we3-d707

ETD doctoral

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