Healthier Campuses, Healthier Kids

From 2004–2008, The Duke Endowment invested $1.5 million to help create and sustain environments that support healthy eating and physical activity at 25 children's homes in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Insights

The Wellness Project ended in 2008. Several insights have proven relevant to wellness work in group homes.

Targeting the Environment

By focusing on changes in the environments of children's homes, the Wellness Project was able to see some broad-reaching results in nutrition. For example, many homes changed their food purchasing practices to focus on offering tasty, healthy foods. Children improved their eating habits — a result that would have been much more difficult to achieve with a child-by-child intervention strategy.

Protecting Time for Physical Activity

With busy schedules for children's home residents, protecting time for physical activity can be challenging. Conflicts arise with various appointments and other out-of-school time activities. The social environment may discourage activity — particularly among girls. Programs that promote physical activity must address both the social and physical environments to encourage residents and staff to take advantage of opportunities.

Understanding the Influence of Adult Role Models

Many children are starved for relationships with caring adults. As a result, they are more likely to engage in physical activity if their trusted adult role models are also engaged, and are more likely to "sit it out" if their adult role models do so. Therefore, getting front-line staff in children's homes actively engaged in physical activity is tremendously important. The Wellness Project was broadened to include training for front-line staff for this very reason.

Partnering for Success

Throughout the Wellness Project, the staff at the University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health was able to translate their academic theory of long-term environmental change in a children's home into a real-world setting in ways that were engaging and effective. Plus, their staff experienced virtually no turnover during the five-year project. This stability led to better data collection, more consistent program delivery and stronger relationships that proved vital to the project's success.

Impact

At its mid-point evaluation at the end of 2006, The Duke Endowment compared the progress of the Phase I group homes, which began work in 2004, with findings from the Phase II group homes, which began their work in 2006. The evaluation found that Phase I homes showed higher measures than Phase II homes in all of the following areas:

• A variety of fun physical activities are provided by skilled adults.
• The homes provide adult encouragement and modeling, positive messages and children's choice for physical activity.
• Children can get uniforms, equipment, money and transportation for sports or other physical activities off campus.
• The home has a wellness club or other programs for staff that promote physical activity.
• The home works with at least one community resource to support or provide nutrition services.

The evaluation found that younger children in the homes (ages 11–14) had increased their physical activity significantly. Older children (ages 15–18), while more active overall, did not increase their level of activity by a significant margin.

Children of all ages increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables, on average, by a serving and a half per day. (Similar studies define success as an increase of about a half serving per day.)

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Associate Director of Child Care
704.969.2117