Healthy Eating in a Boys and Girls Club Afterschool Programme: Barriers, Facilitators, and Opportunities
Health Education Journal. 10 July 2020, Vol. 79(8) 914-931
Background: To determine intervention needs and to gather stakeholder input regarding healthy eating promotion for youth members served at a Boys & Girls Club in Rochester, Minnesota.
Methods: Young people completed a dietary habits questionnaire and height and weight measure-ments. Focus groups gathered stakeholder – Boys & Girls Club members, staff, caregivers – perspectives on opportunities to improve children’s healthy eating through the club setting. Content analysis identified major themes in informants’ accounts.
Results: Participants identified individual and environmental barriers to healthy eating and opportunities to reduce barriers at this Boys & Girls Club site. Few children met basic nutritional guidelines related to fruit, vegetable, milk and water consumption, and limiting consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, and nearly half were overweight/obese. Stakeholders expressed interest in healthy eating promotion and identified multiple individual-level, interpersonal and environmental opportunities to promote healthier eating through the Boys & Girls Club site.
Conclusion: Findings build on a growing literature indicating afterschool programmes are uniquely positioned to address health disparities related to pediatric nutrition and obesity, and can be used to inform the design of a multi-layered intervention to address the complexities influencing dietary quality and obesity among diverse and underserved youth.