The Effects of a Health Promotion Program on Rural, West Virginia Adults
Abstract
Amy E. Spurrier, Catherine Suttle, Linda Matheson and Ann Baker-Watson
Purposes/Aims: To evaluate the effectiveness of a health promotion project designed to increase physical activity and nutritional eating and decrease BMI in adults living in a rural West Virginia community.
Rationale/Background: Evidence has shown that programs that partner with community institutions such as a faith-based organization are more successful in gaining acceptance, contacting target populations, and sustaining the program. This project will focus on the ongoing epidemic of weight, obesity, and inactivity that is plaguing the United States, more specifically West Virginia, and what influence a health promotion program could render. This project will answer the question: What are the effects of a 12-week health promotion program on the BMI, weight, physical activity, and nutritional choices of adults with a BMI of 25 or greater who live in a rural West Virginia community?
Undertaking/best practice/approach/methods/process: The DNP project coordinator will plan, implement, and evaluate a health promotion program in a rural West Virginia community. The intervention will be structured as a 12-week health promotion. The program will begin with a pre-assessment of participants’ knowledge and understanding of health and a healthy lifestyle, including physical activity level and good nutrition. In addition, the following information will be collected from each participant: age, sex, height, weight, and BMI calculation. The goals of this project are: • To facilitate learning through wellness modules focusing on physical activity and nutrition • To increase knowledge of healthy physical activity and nutrition • To improve weight and BMI
Outcomes achieved/documented: The statistical software program, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) will be used to organize and analyze the data. The data will then be analyzed to assess to what degree: learning took place, the program met expectations, participants’ weight decreased, participants’ activity increased, and participants’ nutritional choices improved. Descriptive statistics will be used to paint a picture of the program participants with regard to variables such as age, weight, and BMI. In addition to analyzing individuals’ pre-and post-program measures through the use of paired t-tests, the project coordinator will compile the data to analyze pre- and post-program differences. The project coordinator will disaggregate the data by different demographic variables in order to look for patterns and outliers.
Conclusions: Finding are that most participants are health seeking and want to learn about weight loss, increase in activity, and/or nutritional eating. Other anticipated findings are that participants are overweight and have an unhealthy BMI. If participants make the changes suggested throughout the program, health may increase through a decrease of BMI, decreases in weight, increased physical activity, and healthier nutritional choices.