Results of a Program for a Healthier Lifestyle to Promote Healthy Habits

Liming Yoon^*
*Correspondence: Liming Yoon, Research Center for Higher Education, Tokushima University, Japan, Email:

Keywords

Education • Healthy lifestyle • Behaviour • Physical activities • Nutrition

Introduction

These complex but unquestionably more effective efforts are made to inspire this same knowledge, attitude, and behaviour required to ensure a healthy lifestyle, particularly during childhood and adolescence. The application of ecological models to project planning is demonstrated by recent developments in the field of education public health. There has been meaningful progress in five main areas of school health promotion, which has been the focus of recent developments. Schoolchildren perform better academically when they possess stronger coexistence and citizenship skills, which are supported by proper nutrition, hydration, and food intake, as well as regular physical activity and rest. Likewise, pro-environmental behaviours are encouraged, and mental state is strengthened by finding a life project as well as engaging company. Metrics of poor nutrition, school abandonment, use of psychoactive substances, increased violence and abuse, early pregnancies.

Literature Review

To enhance children's and adolescents' quality of life and lessen the likelihood of a rise in chronic disease and its consequences, this complex situation needs to be addressed. Therefore, the goal of this study is to create a strategy for encouraging healthy life habits in school children between the ages of six and twelve who reside in Colombia's Andean region [1]. This study was created in four stages that were sequential. Context and student characterization came first. By thoroughly reviewing their health context from secondary sources, we were able to include a description of the health and care conditions of schoolchildren in Colombia's Andean region. Then, using the GCPC-UN-P characterization survey for care, we identified these schoolchildren's care conditions. This tool was tested in Spanish and modified for use with schoolchildren. The sociodemographic profile, perception of caring behaviours and the support offered for them, and the use of information and communication technologies as a component of support for care behaviours are all included in this tool [2]. We obtained informed consent from the parents and informed assent from the minors prior to the interview. We purposefully chose a sample of 95 schoolchildren, ages 6 to 12, for this diagnosis. Our sample included individuals from rural, urban, public, and private institutions as well as various Andean municipalities. Using Excel to process the data, we conducted an analysis using descriptive statistical methods.

An expert focus group comprised of 11 school principals with more than five years of experience in the planning of student populations in the Andean region of Colombia validated the strategy. In order to accomplish this, we created a presentation of the strategic plan that covered the issues identified in the school population, its traits, and context; the goal; the participants; the contents and domains; the dosage and duration; the resources needed; the form and location of delivery; and the anticipated proximal, primary, secondary, and distal results. We asked the experts to assess evey component of the strategy and the entire strategy in terms of its clarity, significance, pertinence, and sufficiency. We also asked them for their corrections to or additions to our proposal [3]. Values of 80 points or more were categorised as high, 60 to 79 as medium, and 59 points or less as insufficient. By creating frequency tables and response percentages before and after the intervention, we compared the results for the analysis using SPSS version 22 to see whether the strategy had a positive, negative, or neutral impact on maintaining healthy habits. We conducted intragroup and intergroup comparisons to determine the preliminary impact of the strategy, focusing on two of its components: dietary intake and rest.

Discussion

This health promotion strategy was developed in response to the widespread call for improving the health of school-age children and the general public, particularly in low- and middle-income nations. On the one hand, it makes use of an ecological model that incorporates contexts and knowledge while keeping children as its main focus. On the other hand, it has a multi-component design that addresses numerous knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours that influence health at the same time. The goal of the strategy is to support schoolchildren's daily lives by continuing to support all participants, including the students, their teachers, parents, and the kitchen staff. Last but not least, this approach complies with the call to work to schoolchildren prior to adolescence. On the one hand, it makes use of an ecological model that incorporates contexts and knowledge while keeping children as its main focus. On the other hand, it has a multi-component design that addresses numerous knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours that influence health at the same time. The goal of the strategy is to support schoolchildren's daily lives by supporting all participants, including the students, their teachers, parents, and the kitchen staff. Last but not least, this approach complies with the request to work with schoolchildren prior to adolescence [4]. It is crucial to emphasise that, despite the fact that the strategy improved knowledge, attitude, and behaviour, the results of the categories— with the exception of citizenship competencies—show nonsatisfactory levels, particularly when it comes to schoolchildren's diet and physical activity. This shows that this approach needs to be reinforced over time in order to support the maintenance of healthy habits and the rerouting of unhealthy ones. As part of this study, we hope to support children in adopting healthy lifestyles with the help of their parents and teachers. Our approach consists of five parts: environmental protection, environmental stewardship, eating and nutrition, physical exercise and rest, and direction of one's own life. Our proposal encourages schoolchildren to actively participate in group projects as part of its first component, citizenship skills. Our findings confirm that citizenship is a construction that impacts everyone in the school community. Who strive to combine academic and physical activity. Contrary to these authors, "Prosalud" includes recommendations for getting enough rest that neither the group knew about nor followed. It is remarkable that in our environmental protection component, despite the existence of social movements all over the world, no one is trying to incorporate this component as an activity in the educational plan. In fact, the current proposal encourages younger generations to put their newly acquired knowledge to use while strengthening the application of scientific understanding for environmental care. Finally, developing beneficial friendships implies increased self-awareness in the health promotion strategy component of taking charge of one's own life. Points out that in addition to the context and a clear conceptual approach, a look at the links that the schoolkid has is also important to their overall wellbeing [5]. The authors claim that a student's choice of friends can determine whether they succeed or fail in the present and in the future. The results of the initial analysis of the "Prosalud" strategy show that it has a beneficial impact. However, two issues come into play: First, it must be acknowledged that these strategies require continuity over time in order to close the gap between the progress achieved and the desired scenarios to transform health for this population, even though it is an important achievement to go from an overall average of 66.9% to 70.1% regarding health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour evaluation results. The second, but equally important, is the dedication and drive that teachers should possess, as they did not demonstrate a change in this initial assessment, but their knowledge, attitude, and behaviour can be decisive in changing the health behaviours of students. This necessitates the creation of a prospective plan that outlines the various segments of the school community in order for them to change the culture and establish healthy lifestyle habits that can be more enduring over time and accomplish the changes we suggest. The inclusion of media and public policy in "Prosalud" might be a tactical advancement in the area.

Conclusion

The Prosalud strategy was created to encourage young people in Colombia's Andes who are in school between the ages of six and twelve to lead healthy lifestyles. This approach is targeted at the particular schoolchildren chosen for it, and it adapts to their characteristics by keeping an ecological viewpoint that also takes into account their parents, teachers, and service providers. The educational community was taken into account in the context of its particular culture. The Prosalud strategy was created in accordance with the global standard for the creation of health interventions. Its topics are broken down into five main categories: the development of civic virtues, wholesome eating and nutrition, exercise and rest, the encouragement of proenvironmental attitudes, and the bolstering of the life project through the choice of compatible companions.

Conflict of Interest

None.

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