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Generating Rural Options for Weight-Healthy Kids and Communities:Examining the rural family home nutrition and physical activity environment Carolyn Booth, URAP Apprentice; Kathy Gunter, PhD, Associate Professor

COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES

Childhood health is a strong determinant of adult health,

including overweight and obesity. Rural children and adults

experience a greater obesity prevalence compared to children

and adults living in more urban places. The goal of

Generating Rural Options for Weight-Healthy Kids &

Communities (GROW HKC) is to prevent childhood obesity

and promote healthy weight among children and families

living in rural places. GROW HKC focuses efforts in rural

communities, schools, and families. The data presented here

focus on the rural family home environment.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this investigation was to examine

the family home food and physical activity environment

among rural families. Generally, rural families report healthy eating habits.

Areas where families are doing particularly well include:

• 85% of families reported “usually” or “almost always”

eat together.

• ~60% of families reported their child never drinks

sugar sweetened beverages.

• 52% of families reported they “almost always” monitor

eating of chips, cookies and candy.

Places where rural families are challenged include:

• 20% of families report habitually watching electronic

media while eating; 40% do so sometimes.

• 48% of adults do not monitor children’s chips, cookies,

or candy eating; 41% reward children to some

frequency with sweets.

• One in five children “sometimes” or “almost never” eat

fruits and vegetables at meals and snacks.

Identifying FNPA items where rural families struggle

to engage in habitually healthy behaviors reveals

targets for improving environments and behaviors.

Our results suggest intervention strategies should be

directed toward:

• Increasing low-fat milk, fruit, and veggie intake

• Monitoring eating of chips, cookies, and candy

• Reducing incidences of rewarding kids with sweets

• Decreasing screen time

• Promoting environmental actions that enable greater

participation in organized sports of physical

activities

• Though the FNPA survey asks participants to

respond with the most usual pattern, and not what

the respondent would like to happen, total honesty

is not always provided.

• Exposure to food and PA opportunities outside of

the home environment also influences child

behaviors; we did not measure that here.

Research supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, grant #2011-68001-30020

and by the College of Public Health and Human Sciences Undergraduate Research Award Program.

Introduction

Methods

FNPA item scores range from 1-4 and

measure family-level nutrition and

activity practices that predict child BMI.

Higher scores reflect healthier habits.

Demographic data (Table 1) were also

collected on all children and

participating child caregivers/parents.

Parent/Caregiver education level is

presented in Table 2.

We recruited 165 families, including 239 children from three

diverse, rural Oregon counties. All enrolled families

completed the Family Nutrition and Physical Activity

Screening Tool (FNPA) relative to each of their enrolled

children. The FNPA measures family and child rules and

habitual practices shown to predict child BMI.

Results

Table 3: Participant Responses to Family Nutrition and Physical

Activity Survey (FNPA; N=177)

Table 3 shows proportion of participant responses to each FNPA item.

• ~70% of families report they “usually” or “almost

always” engage in PA together.

• 68% of families “almost always” encourage children

to be active; 62.2% regularly provide PA opportunities.

• 48.6% of families reported “almost never” or

“sometimes” enrolling their child in activity or sports

programs.

• ~40% report children are never or sometimes spending

< 2 hours on TV/games/computers daily

Table 1: Participant Ethnicity Table 2: Caregiver Education Level

The sample of participants are overwhelmingly white,

with 11.7% of adults and 13.8% of children identified as

Latino. Approximately 50% of respondents reported

completing some college; 24.6% never attended college.

Two-adult households make up 73% of families, and

8.8% of families are single-adult households, with one to

two children. Food security was concerning- 37.4% of

families worried about insufficient food budget in the past

year, and 30.4% actually ran out of money. Complete data

were obtained on N=177 FNPA Surveys (Table 3).

RESULTS: Demographics

RESULTS: FNPA Nutrition Items

RESULTS: FNPA Physical Activity Items

Discussion

Study Limitations

Benefits of the URAP Experience: Honor’s Thesis

During the 2014-2015 school year I will use the FNPA

survey to collect additional data from rural and non-

rural Oregon families. My research question relates to

examining differences in FNPA responses between

rural and non-rural families. My experience on this

project has helped me learn about the measures and the

impacts of home environments on rural family health.