| Swinburn B, Bell C, King L, Magarey A, O'Brien K, Waters E. Obesity prevention programs demand high-quality evaluations, Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 2007; 31(4): 305-307. |
Obesity prevention programs are springing up in response to growing concerns about childhood obesity. This is a very welcome development following more than a decade of inaction since the epidemic was recognised in the mid-1990s. Another welcome development has been the increased emphasis on using evidence to inform public health practice, programs and policies. Unfortunately, knowing what works and what does not work for obesity prevention is difficult because the evidence base is so limited and the settings in which interventions have been tested are so few (mainly primary schools). The Primary Prevention Group of the Australian Childhood and Adolescent Obesity Research Network (ACAORN) is concerned that some obesity prevention programs are being planned or implemented with insufficient priority being placed on appropriate designs or sufficient funding for rigorous evaluation. Expensive programs with weak evaluations waste precious resources, fail to contribute to their own quality enhancement, and also fail to contribute much-needed effectiveness evidence to the literature. These exact concerns have also recently been raised about the United Kingdom (UK) response to childhood obesity by the UK Audit Office. This article proposes opportunities to lift the quality of evaluation of obesity prevention programs in the region.
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http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1326-0200
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| Kremer PJ, Bell AC, Swinburn BA. Calibration and reliability of a school food checklist: a new tool for assessing school food and beverage consumption., Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2006;15(4): 465-472 |
The prevalence of childhood obesity is increasing in Australia and it is likely that inappropriate eating patterns are a major contributor. However, capturing childrens eating behaviours is difficult because of a lack of tools to assess the intake of food
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hec.server101.com/APJCN/loginpast.htm
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| Sanigorski AM, Bell AC, Swinburn BA. Association of key foods and beverages with obesity in Australian schoolchildren. Public Health Nutrition, 2007; 10(2): 152-157., |
Objective: To examine the pattern of intake of key foods and beverages of children
aged 4–12 years and the association with weight status.
Parents/guardians of 2184 children from Barwon South Western region of Victoria, were interviewed to find out
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http://www.nutritionsociety.org/index.asp?nsm=3&page=63
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| van Zutphen M, Bell AC, Kremer PJ, Swinburn BA. Association between the family environment and television viewing in Australian children. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 2007; 43(6): 458-463., |
Aim: To describe the time children spend watching television (TV) and to assess associations between TV viewing time, the family environment and weight status.
Methods: As part of a large cross-sectional study conducted in 2002/3, parents in the Barwon
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http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/submit.asp?ref=1034-4810
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| Finch M, Begley A, Sutherland R, Harrison M, Collins C Development and reproducibility of a tool to assess school food-purchasing practices and lifestyle habits of Australia primary school-aged children, Nutrition and Dietetics 2007; 64(2): 86-92. |
The School Eating Habits and Lifestyle Survey has been developed and pilot-tested in primary school-aged children and has shown to have moderate stability over time. The results show that each phase of development, particularly those spent in consultatio
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http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bsc/ndi/2007/00000064/00000002/art00005
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| Johnstone E, Knight J, Gillham K, Campbell E, Nicholas C, Wiggers J System-wide adoption of health promotion practices by schools: evaluation of a telephone and mail-based dissemination strategy in Australia, Health promotion International Oxford Journals 2006; 21(3). |
Schools can potentially benefit from system-wide approaches to the dissemination of health promotion practices. This intervention study undertaken in the Hunter Region of NSW, Australia used a pre-post design to assess whether the phone and mail interven
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http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/dal020v1
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| Finch M, Sutherland R, Harrison M, Collins C Canteen purchasing practices of year 1-6 primary school children and association with SES and weight status, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 2006; 30(3): 247-251. |
This cross-sectional study was conducted in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Primary schools were randomly selected from a list of government schools and 5,206 students from years 1-6, 16 schools were invited to participate.
Findings show the ma
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http://www.phaa.net.au/members_only/journalpdf_2006/june_2006/ANZJPH%202006-3%20-%20Finch.pdf
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| Sutherland R, Gill T, Binns C. Do parents, teachers and health professionals support school-based obesity prevention. Nutrition and Dietetics 2004; 61(3): 65-72., |
This paper explores parents', teachers' and health professionals' attitudes to factors leading to childhood obesity and the role of the school in preventing obesity in children.
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http://www.ajnd.org.au/
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| Radvan D, Wiggers J, Hazell T. HEALTH C.H.I.P.s: Opportunistic community use of computerized health information programs. Health Education Research 2004; 19: 581-590., |
This paper describes two studies which investigate the potential of using touchscreen computer kiosks for health education in a range of community settings.
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http://her.oupjournals.org/
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