Abstract
Issue addressed: Children and adults in Australia are not eating the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. Our objective was to assess the effectiveness of a health promotion intervention to improve fruit and vegetable intake among primary school children and their families in NSW. Methods: The Cancer Council New South Wales Healthy Lunch Box sessions were a 25-minute session delivered to parents of primary school-aged children. The sessions provided information and resources about fruit and vegetables and healthy school lunch boxes. The evaluation is a quantitative uncontrolled pre-post design. Data were collected using three questionnaires, pre-intervention, 1 week post-intervention and 6 months post-intervention. Results: A total of 204 parents completed all three evaluation questionnaires to 6 months. Knowledge of recommended intakes and serving sizes of fruit and vegetables improved significantly after the intervention. There was an increase in parents reporting packing vegetables (often/always) in the child's lunch box at 1 week (47%) and 6 months post-intervention (40%) compared to pre-intervention (32%). The proportion of parents reporting that they were confident in packing a healthy lunch box increased from 45% pre-intervention to 62% after the intervention. Conclusion: The Healthy Lunch Box sessions were effective in improving parental knowledge and practices related to fruit and vegetables and parental confidence with packing a healthy lunch box. So what?: This short intervention could be a useful component of a portfolio of interventions to support parents with knowledge and resources to pack a healthy lunch box for their children.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 102-107 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Health Promotion Journal of Australia |
Volume | 30 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2019 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- evaluation
- fruit
- healthy eating
- interventions
- lunch box
- parents
- vegetables