Nutritional education for schools, Brazil

Objectives

Globally, more than 1 billion people are overweight and at least 300 million of them are obese.

Increasingly, more and more children and adolescents are becoming overweight and obese. In Brazil, the proportion of the 6-18 years old who are overweight increased from 3% in 1975 to 15% in 1997. More recent estimates suggest that the proportion may be as high as 20%.

WDF supports the fight against obesity as it is a major risk factor for a number of diseases including diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The objective of the project is to prevent obesity among young people through promotion of nutritional education.

Approach

With its focus on prevention of obesity among school children by providing education on healthy nutrition this project is being implemented by the Brazilian NGO Associacão Diabetes Juvenil. Associacão Diabetes Juvenil was founded in 1980 by a group of parents whose children had diabetes. Providing health education to people with diabetes, their families, health professionals and the general public has been one of the key activities of the organisation since its inception.

The main causes of overweight and obesity include excess consumption of energy-dense food and limited physical activity, behaviours that start in early childhood become habits in later life and become increasingly difficult to change. Early health education is an important tool to influence behaviours and attitudes before they become ingrained.

This project will provide health education on obesity to school children and adolescents between the age of 6 and 18 years at 40 public schools in 18 cities in the state of São Paulo.

At the beginning of the project, students will fill out a questionnaire about their nutritional habits, anthropometric measurements will be taken and familial risk to obesity and diabetes will be assessed. All the activities in the project will be carried out by a multidisciplinary team of 10 health care providers.

After the initial assessments have been made the students will receive information on nutrition and the importance of physical activity. A booklet and other educational materials focusing on healthy eating habits and the need to stay healthy to prevent obesity and diabetes will be produced and made available to the students. The lectures and materials will be adapted according to the age of the students, but will in general contain playful activities such as games and cross-words. It is expected that 36,000 students will receive education about nutrition through this project.

While it is one thing to provide knowledge, changing behaviour and sustaining the change requires creating supportive environment for the students at school and home. Therefore, their parents and teachers will also be targeted and invited to participate in the lectures to learn more about the importance of lifestyle on the risk of diabetes and other diseases. The schools will also be encouraged to provide conditions that promote a healthy lifestyle.

After a period of intervention the students will receive another questionnaire to assess the impact of the intervention on the students' eating habits and level of physical activity.

Results at completion

• Awareness about nutrition raised for 45,237 students