Testing a school-based program to promote digital health literacy and healthy lifestyle behaviours in intermediate elementary students: The Learning for Life program

Autor: Kurtis Stewart, Elizabeth Stacy, Antonia Hyman, Gerry Kasten, Kendall Ho, Helen Novak Lauscher, Anne-Marie Jamin
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Preventive Medicine Reports
Preventive Medicine Reports, Vol 19, Iss, Pp 101149-(2020)
ISSN: 2211-3355
Popis: Highlights • Learning for Life (L4L) is a classroom-based program for grade 4–7 students. • L4L is flexibly taught by teachers and addresses gaps in current education. • L4L can increase digital health literacy and health knowledge in students. • L4L helps children develop healthy habits for their long-term wellbeing.
Promoting digital health literacy and healthy lifestyle behaviours in children can lead to positive long-term health outcomes and prevent chronic diseases. However, there are few school-based interventions promoting this education to intermediate elementary students. The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of a novel intervention to increase students’ digital health literacy and health knowledge. Learning for Life is a classroom-based education program, developed for grade 4–7 students and delivered by teachers over six weeks. Three Canadian schools were recruited to deliver the intervention in 2018. This study had a pre-post design and no control group. Students’ self-reported digital health literacy and healthy lifestyle behaviours were measured at pre-intervention (n = 126), post-intervention (n = 119), and two-month follow-up (n = 104). Students at pre-intervention had a mean (SD) age of 10.98 (0.56) years (57.1% females). Almost all (97%) students had unsupervised access to the Internet through a computer or smartphone. From pre- to post-intervention, students’ digital health literacy increased (p = 0.009), but decreased from post-intervention to follow-up (p
Databáze: OpenAIRE