Studenten voor Lekker Fit! (Students for a healthy lifestyle!) – The Netherlands (IFMSA NL)

Name of the activity: Studenten voor Lekker Fit! (Students for a healthy lifestyle!)

Country/NMO: The Netherlands (IFMSA NL)

Program: Healthy Lifestyles & Non-Communicable Diseases

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Education

General description:

Within this peer-education project we focus on the importance of a healthy diet, good physical exercise and the knowledge of this topic amongst the parents, by offering three modules. Together with the Dutch Heart Foundation we created a small working-book that consists of theoretical information and practical exercises which we use as a base for taste-lessons and active games. In this way we try to show children and their parents that it’s fun and important to eat healthy and to do physical exercises.

Focus area:

Healthy food and exercise, obesity

Problem statement:

Child obesity is becoming a big problem within The Netherlands. The current statistics show that almost 13% of the children between four and twelve years old are overweight and 4% of these children are obese. As future health care professionals we have the responsibility to stimulate a healthy lifestyle amongst children to prevent child obesity and related diseases like diabetes.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

Our main target group are children in primary school between the age of eight and twelve. Besides that we try to reach the parents of those children and the primary-school direction. Furthermore the medical students will learn about a healthy lifestyle and how they can teach children about this topic. In the end the whole community will encounter the benefits of this project.

Objectives and indicators of success:

• Students learn basic knowledge about a healthy diet and physical activity.
o Students will be trained and make a presentation for the lesson which will be checked.
• The teaching skills of the students will be developed.
o Survey among primary school teachers.
• Students will practice on giving advice on a healthy lifestyle.
o Survey among students.
• Providing an educational and interactive lesson on nutrition for primary school children.
o Short survey among the children.
• Providing an educational and active lesson on healthy physical exercises for primary school children.
o Short survey among children.
• Educating parents about the importance of a healthy diet and physical exercise habits.
o Survey among the parents.

Methodology:

Within this peer-education project we focus on the importance of a healthy diet, good physical exercise and the knowledge of this topic amongst the parents, by offering three modules. Together with the Dutch Heart Foundation we created a small working-book that consists of theoretical information and practical exercises which we use as a base for taste-lessons and active games. In this way we try to show children and their parents that it’s fun and important to eat healthy and to do physical exercises.

Plans for evaluation:

For the evaluation of this project we use a lot of surveys, since we are working with a lot of different groups. All these surveys are mostly about the experiences of students, parents, teachers and children during the lesson. The surveys will be collected and analysed and the results will be discussed during the meetings of the organising committee. Since our lessons are only being held once, it’s difficult to measure if children are really changing their eating habits or if they are doing more physical exercises. We do count how many children and parents we teached. In the future we might plan a second lessons to be able to do a better impact measurement of our lesson.