Assessing sustainability of Lifestyle Education for Activity Program (LEAP)
Open accessAbstract
Sustained intervention effects are needed for positive health impacts in populations; however, few published examples illustrate methods for assessing sustainability in health promotion programs. This paper describes the methods for assessing sustainability of the Lifestyle Education for Activity Program (LEAP). LEAP was a comprehensive school-based intervention that targeted change in instructional practices and the school environment to promote physical activity (PA) in high school girls. Previous reports indicated that significantly more girls in the intervention compared with control schools reported engaging in vigorous PA, and positive long-term effects on vigorous PA also were observed for girls in schools that most fully implemented and maintained the intervention 3 years following the active intervention. In this paper, the seven steps used to assess sustainability in LEAP are presented; these steps provide a model for assessing sustainability in health promotion programs in other settings. Unique features of the LEAP sustainability model include assessing sustainability of changes in instructional practices and the environment, basing assessment on an essential element framework that defined complete and acceptable delivery at the beginning of the project, using multiple data sources to assess sustainability, and assessing implementation longitudinally.
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Approaches to monitoring included diverse areas to assess including having appropriate data to document progress, having a management or monitoring system in place, and having regular reporting and feedback mechanisms.
“Approaches to monitoring included diverse areas to assess including having appropriate data to document progress [64, 65], having a management or monitoring system in place [15, 53, 61, 66, 67], and having regular reporting and feedback mechanisms [46, 47, 52, 54, 68, 69].”
From Navigating the sustainability landscape: a systematic review of sustainability approaches in healthcare (2018) · cites this paper as [64]
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- Authors
- Saunders, R. P., Pate, R. R., Dowda, M., Ward, D. S., Epping, J. N., & Dishman, R. K.
- Affiliations
- University of South Carolina (US)
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US)
- University of Georgia (US)
- Corresponding author
- Saunders, R. P.
- Venue
- Health Education Research
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2011-12-08
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 319-330
- ISSN
- 0268-1153 (ISSN-L)
- 1465-3648
- PMC
- PMC3303207
- OpenAlex
- W2128907303
- Cited by
- 29
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 3.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Health Education Research (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) (submittedVersion)
- Scholar Commons (University of South Carolina) (submittedVersion)
- UNC Libraries
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01HL057775, HL57775)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Speech and Hearing › School Health and Nursing Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Policy Implementation Science
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Physical Activity and Health
- Keywords
- intervention sustainability, school-based physical activity promotion, high school girls, physical activity, instructional practices, school environment, health promotion programs, longitudinal assessment, multi-source data
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Female, Health Education, Health Promotion, Humans, Interviews as Topic, Life Style, Male, Motor Activity, Program Evaluation
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