The """"""""Community Component of HEALTHY FOR LIFE"""""""" is a major addition to an existing middle school-based research project is to provide and evaluate parent and community interventions to prevent poor nutrition, the use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, and premature sexual intercourse. The proposed community program will enhance and reinforce the messages communicated by the in-school curriculum. The proposed program would strengthen the existing HFL by providing Community Organizers to work with parent and community organizations in each of fourteen middle school attendance areas, which we are functionally equating with a community. The planned intervention includes: a) dissemination of activity packets to parents and community leaders, b) assistance for existing parent and community organizations to help them address the targeted issues, c) training for community youth leaders and health care professionals in promoting the messages of HFL, and d) creating advisory committees to share planning, coordination and information among communities. The evaluation research builds on an outcome evaluation of the existing HEALTHY FOR LIFE by linking various qualitative data to student surveys to examine the effectiveness of the program in influencing the behavior of the adolescents. The outcome design includes: a) a correlational design linking student survey data to an index of community involvements, b) a controlled design involving randomly assigned communities, 8 which will receive the school and community components and 4 which will receive only the school component, c) an examination of the institutionalization of the program in each community and d) a parent survey which examines parent reaction to the program. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments of program implementation and outcome success will be made.
| Moberg, D P; Piper, D L (1998) The Healthy for Life project: sexual risk behavior outcomes. AIDS Educ Prev 10:128-48 |
| Piper, D L; King, M J; Wildner, L (1990) Can we influence adolescent health behavior? Wis Med J 89:522-4 |
