A content analysis of kindergarten-12th grade school-based nutrition interventions: taking advantage of past learning

Objective: To review the literature, identifying proposed recommendations for school-based nutrition interventions, and evaluate kindergarten through 12th grade school-based nutrition interventions conducted from 2000-2008.

Design: Proposed recommendations from school-based intervention reviews were developed and used in conducting a content analysis of 26 interventions.

Participants: Twenty-six school-based nutrition interventions in the United States first published in peer-reviewed journals from 2000-2008. VARIABLE MEASURED: Ten proposed recommendations based on prior analyses of school-based nutrition interventions: (1) behaviorally focused, (2) multicomponents, (3) healthful food/school environment, (4) family involvement, (5) self-assessments, (6) quantitative evaluation, (7) community involvement, (8) ethnic/heterogeneous groups, (9) multimedia technology, and (10) sequential and sufficient duration.

Analysis: Descriptive statistics.

Results: The most frequent recommendations used were: (1) behaviorally focused components (100%) and (2) quantitative evaluation of food behaviors (96%). Only 15% of the interventions included community involvement or ethnic/heterogeneous groups, whereas 31% included anthropometric measures. Five of the 10 proposed recommendations were included in over 50% of the interventions.

Conclusions and implications: Rising trend of overweight children warrants the need to synthesize findings from previous studies to inform research and program development and assist in identification of high-impact strategies and tactics.