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Generating Rural Options for Weight-Healthy Kids and Communities:Examining the rural family home nutrition and physical activity environment Carolyn Booth, URAP Apprentice; Kathy Gunter, PhD, Associate Professor
COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES
Childhood health is a strong determinant of adult health,
including overweight and obesity. Rural children and adults
experience a greater obesity prevalence compared to children
and adults living in more urban places. The goal of
Generating Rural Options for Weight-Healthy Kids &
Communities (GROW HKC) is to prevent childhood obesity
and promote healthy weight among children and families
living in rural places. GROW HKC focuses efforts in rural
communities, schools, and families. The data presented here
focus on the rural family home environment.
PURPOSE: The purpose of this investigation was to examine
the family home food and physical activity environment
among rural families. Generally, rural families report healthy eating habits.
Areas where families are doing particularly well include:
• 85% of families reported “usually” or “almost always”
eat together.
• ~60% of families reported their child never drinks
sugar sweetened beverages.
• 52% of families reported they “almost always” monitor
eating of chips, cookies and candy.
Places where rural families are challenged include:
• 20% of families report habitually watching electronic
media while eating; 40% do so sometimes.
• 48% of adults do not monitor children’s chips, cookies,
or candy eating; 41% reward children to some
frequency with sweets.
• One in five children “sometimes” or “almost never” eat
fruits and vegetables at meals and snacks.
Identifying FNPA items where rural families struggle
to engage in habitually healthy behaviors reveals
targets for improving environments and behaviors.
Our results suggest intervention strategies should be
directed toward:
• Increasing low-fat milk, fruit, and veggie intake
• Monitoring eating of chips, cookies, and candy
• Reducing incidences of rewarding kids with sweets
• Decreasing screen time
• Promoting environmental actions that enable greater
participation in organized sports of physical
activities
• Though the FNPA survey asks participants to
respond with the most usual pattern, and not what
the respondent would like to happen, total honesty
is not always provided.
• Exposure to food and PA opportunities outside of
the home environment also influences child
behaviors; we did not measure that here.
Research supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, grant #2011-68001-30020
and by the College of Public Health and Human Sciences Undergraduate Research Award Program.
Introduction
Methods
FNPA item scores range from 1-4 and
measure family-level nutrition and
activity practices that predict child BMI.
Higher scores reflect healthier habits.
Demographic data (Table 1) were also
collected on all children and
participating child caregivers/parents.
Parent/Caregiver education level is
presented in Table 2.
We recruited 165 families, including 239 children from three
diverse, rural Oregon counties. All enrolled families
completed the Family Nutrition and Physical Activity
Screening Tool (FNPA) relative to each of their enrolled
children. The FNPA measures family and child rules and
habitual practices shown to predict child BMI.
Results
Table 3: Participant Responses to Family Nutrition and Physical
Activity Survey (FNPA; N=177)
Table 3 shows proportion of participant responses to each FNPA item.
• ~70% of families report they “usually” or “almost
always” engage in PA together.
• 68% of families “almost always” encourage children
to be active; 62.2% regularly provide PA opportunities.
• 48.6% of families reported “almost never” or
“sometimes” enrolling their child in activity or sports
programs.
• ~40% report children are never or sometimes spending
< 2 hours on TV/games/computers daily
Table 1: Participant Ethnicity Table 2: Caregiver Education Level
The sample of participants are overwhelmingly white,
with 11.7% of adults and 13.8% of children identified as
Latino. Approximately 50% of respondents reported
completing some college; 24.6% never attended college.
Two-adult households make up 73% of families, and
8.8% of families are single-adult households, with one to
two children. Food security was concerning- 37.4% of
families worried about insufficient food budget in the past
year, and 30.4% actually ran out of money. Complete data
were obtained on N=177 FNPA Surveys (Table 3).
RESULTS: Demographics
RESULTS: FNPA Nutrition Items
RESULTS: FNPA Physical Activity Items
Discussion
Study Limitations
Benefits of the URAP Experience: Honor’s Thesis
During the 2014-2015 school year I will use the FNPA
survey to collect additional data from rural and non-
rural Oregon families. My research question relates to
examining differences in FNPA responses between
rural and non-rural families. My experience on this
project has helped me learn about the measures and the
impacts of home environments on rural family health.