CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 17Public Health Policies and EducationNutrition, Health and Food BehaviorEvaluation and Performance Assessment

Evaluation of a community-based health promotion program supporting public policy initiatives for a healthy diet

Dunt, D.·1999·Health Promotion International
DOI 10.1093/heapro/14.4.317
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The ‘Towards a Healthy Diet’ phase of the Shepparton Healthy Heart Project was evaluated. The principal goal of this phase was to promote public policy initiatives that promoted healthy diet, supported by changes in community opinion and interest in healthy diet. Changing individual behaviour was a secondary goal only. These public policy initiatives were directed at eating places, schools and the health services. The eating places initiative promoted healthy practices in food preparation and presentation as well as customer healthy food choice behaviours. These initiatives were accompanied by media-based health education and community events. The evaluation employed a two-community, quasi-experimental study design which assessed process, formative and impact (but not outcome) dimensions relevant to the program's objectives. Community opinion as well as dietary behaviour and cognition about healthy diet were assessed using a panel mail questionnaire survey of 1137 residents in the two communities. Community awareness and response to Towards a Healthy Diet were assessed at its completion in a separate cross-sectional mail questionnaire survey of 703 residents of Shepparton. Supermarket sales figures supplemented assessment of behaviour. Fifty-one eating places were assessed using interviews of a panel of proprietors/managers as well as on-site inspections. Initiatives aimed at schools were assessed by on-site interviews, those at general practitioners by a panel mail questionnaire survey. Towards a Healthy Diet achieved its goals only in part. A higher proportion of Shepparton residents reported recent increases in the number of eating places offering healthy food and local residents eating healthy food. There was a significantly greater increase in the number of fruit dishes offered in Shepparton eating places as well as customer requests for fruit. Changes in individual behaviours only differed in the two communities for frequency of eating take-away food, where there was a significant decrease in Shepparton. Canteen policies were more frequently implemented in Shepparton schools. This study provides support for community-based approaches to healthy diet-based public policy initiatives supported by social marketing in the future. Further rigorously evaluated demonstration projects are necessary to replicate and extend these results. This is true for other alternative approaches to community-based programs so far implemented for promoting healthy diet.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/heapro/14.4.317

Cites

17 of 17 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Shorter-term media campaigns have generally increased knowledge of healthy lifestyle messages, although sometimes less so in lower socioeconomic or minority subgroups and typically with less clear evidence for actual behavior change, although there were some exceptions in which behavior change was also demonstrated.

    “Shorter-term (weeks to months) media campaigns, such as Fighting Fat, Fighting Fit in the United Kingdom and similar programs in the United States and Australia have generally increased knowledge of healthy lifestyle messages, although sometimes less so in lower socioeconomic or minority subgroups and typically with less clear evidence for actual behavior change,52–54 although there were some”

    From Population Approaches to Improve Diet, Physical Activity, and Smoking Habits: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association (2012) · cites this paper as [54]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Dunt, D.
Corresponding author
Dunt, D.
ORCID
Dunt, D.
Venue
Health Promotion International
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
1999-12-01
Volume
14
Issue
4
Pages
317-327
ISSN
  • 0957-4824 (ISSN-L)
  • 1460-2245
DOI
10.1093/heapro/14.4.317
OpenAlex
W2102230958
Cited by
17
References
17
Citations by year
2021: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 1
FWCI
0.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Health Promotion International (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Public Health Policies and Education
  • Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Evaluation and Performance Assessment
Keywords
healthy eating, community health promotion, public policy, food service establishments, healthy food choices, social marketing, fruit dishes, general practitioners, community opinion, supermarket sales

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review