Author(s): Olajide Williams, Vanessa Sawyer*, Gabriela Drucker, Ewelina Swierad, John Rausch, Joseph Eimicke, Jian Kong, Stephanie Silver, Jeanne Teresi, Rachael Gazdick, James M. Noble
Objective: Federally mandated calorie postings in chain restaurants have the potential to significantly impact average annual population weight gain by providing consumers with point-of-purchase nutrition information for healthier dietary decisions. However, at the individual level, several key barriers to behavior change persist including, low health literacy, simple numeracy and health prioritization. This study is designed to test the effect of “Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S (Healthy Eating and Living in Schools; HHH)”, an intervention targeting the use of point-of-purchase calorie postings for healthier food purchases among 5th grade children and their families.
Methods: Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S uses a music-based “Menu Board Literacy” curriculum designed for 5th grade students. HHH incorporates the New York State Common Core Learning Standards for Mathematics into a point-of-purchase, hip hop themed, healthier decision-making intervention. Delivered via a Learning Management System and facilitated by teachers, the final HHH intervention is an interactive 10-week, 40 h, intervention. Using a pretest-posttest design, we plan to randomize 14 after-school sites in low-income NYC (New York City) neighborhoods into one of two arms: The HHH nutrition-math curriculum arm versus a “Food Explorers” control condition that does not specifically address fast-food restaurant calorie postings. The unit of randomization is the after-school site from which 280 5th grade students will be enrolled. Children will complete a validated instrument called the Menu Board Calorie Literacy (MBCL) questionnaire and undergo a blinded voucher-based food purchasing assessment at baseline, 1 week following the program and at 2-months post-program. Child-to-parent communication of newly acquired nutrition literacy to participating parents will also be assessed. The primary outcome is the child’s food purchasing behavior as measured by the caloric and nutrient-density of purchased items with vouchers. Children are unaware that their purchases are being tracked.
Conclusion: This study aims to evaluate the cognitive and behavioral effects of an intervention designed to improve point-of-purchase food choice behaviors of minoritized children and the ability of these children to successfully transfer newly acquired nutrition literacy to their parents.
