5210 Program Intervention at

Greater Plains Elementary School

Michelle Eckler, Michelle Grader,
Olivia Schmith, and Stephanie Potwin, Dietetics Students
Callie-Jo Sheldon, After-School Coordinator
Mary Ann Dowdell, Ph.D., R.D., CDN Faculty Advisor
Needs Assessment
Methods
. To prepare for our assessment questionnaires and interventions, we
interviewed key informant Callie-Jo Sheldon, after-school coordinator to
give us the insight we needed to gain more knowledge about the kids and
how the program would run.
A student assessment survey was administered to all of the students in the
Grater Plains elementary after school program on February 13th, 2014. The
students grade K-5 were assessed using two separate surveys, one for the
K-2 students and one for the 3-5 students. These surveys assessed the
students intake of fruits and vegetables, intake of sweetened beverages,
their participation in screen time activities, and how active they are daily.
They also played the red-light green-light game to evaluate their knowledge
of healthy and unhealthy foods and beverages.
Results
Based on our findings, we identified health/nutrition problems including:
Food-and-nutrition related knowledge deficit pertaining to how many fruits
and vegetables to eat and what foods are considered healthy/unhealthy
Food-and-nutrition related knowledge deficit pertaining to the amount of
screen time they should be watching.
Physical inactivity
Excessive amount of screen time

Intervention Methods
Two Educational Sessions were administered highlighting the
following mechanisms:
Session 1: March 3rd, 2014
1) Spoke for 30 minutes on the importance of consumption of 5
fruits and vegetables a day in order sustain a healthy lifestyle
and the health benefits of different colored fruits and
vegetables with the help of a poster tool representing a
rainbow of fruits and vegetables.
2) A coloring activity was administered to the children to match
the color of the fruits and vegetables with the health benefit
associated with them.
3) Our second activity involved a taste test of the rainbow. For
this we provided: Red: Red Seedless Grapes, Orange:
Carrots, Blue/Purple: Blueberries, Green: Broccoli, White:
Jicama. We also provided light ranch dressing and hummus
to utilize as a dip.

Goal 1) Increase the childrens knowledge about the health benefits of different
colored fruits and vegetables and increase their daily consumption of
fruits and vegetables to 5 a day.

When it came to our results, we were limited with the time

allotted for educating the children of Greater Plains
Elementary School. Since we administered our lessons
during the after school program, children would leave at
various times and we did not always have the same children.
If given more time we could have passed out time logs for
kids to fill out with their physical activity and screen time to
analyze them further. Some of the students had previously
been taught the 5210 program, therefore our results may
have been skewed with children who are aware of the correct
answers and students who wanted to be funny and would say
the exact opposite of the answers that they knew were
correct.

Session 2: March 10th, 2014

1) Brief 20 minute presentation discussing what is considered
screen time.
2) Administered worksheets that enabled children to draw
images on physical activities they could perform on a rainy,
snowy, or summer day.
3) Spoke again for 20 minutes with children about exercises they
could perform during commercial breaks when watching
television to become more physically active in their day.
4) Celebrated after with a 10 minute dance party to get children
moving to their favorite songs.

CONCLUSION

Inappropriate consumption of sweetened beverages

Goals and Objectives

Discussion

Outcome Results
Using the results our assessments before intervention and
after the intervention, we were able to determine the results
for our objectives:

Upon completion of our program:

OO1A) The number of children who eat a fruit with their lunch will increase
from 46.2% (6/13) to 69.2% (9/13).
OO1B) The number of children who eat a vegetable with their lunch will
increase from 15.4% (2/13) to 30.8% (4/13).
OO1C) At least 50% of the children will be able to correctly match the health
benefit to the color it pertains to.

OO1A) The number of students who eat a fruit with their lunch
increased to 85.3%.
OO1B) The number of students who eat a vegetable with their
lunch increased to 44.1%.
OO1C) 85.3% of the students were able to correctly match the
health benefit to the color it pertains to.

Goal 2) Reduce the amount of screen time children have each day while
increasing the amount of physical activity they get each day.

OO2A) We were unable to evaluate this outcome objective.

OO2B) The number of children who watch 5 or more episodes
or more TV shows a day decreased to 20.6%.

Upon completion of our program:

OO2A) The number of children who are active after school will increase from
61.3% (27/44) to 75.0% (33/44).
OO2B) The number of children who watch 5 or more episodes of television in a
day will decrease from 23.1% (3/13) to 15.4% (2/13).

An additional outcome we evaluated was: 79.4% of children

knew that they should watch 2 hours or less of screen time
each day.

While we were not able to evaluate all of our outcome

objectives or determine if our sessions had a lasting effect on
students behaviors, we were successful in providing them with
the knowledge needed to make healthful lifestyle choices. It
can be determined that through an interactive and
informational approach (i.e. posters, presentations, food
tastings, and physical activities), the students were able to
learn from our sessions. This would be a useful approach in
future programs.