Healthy Eating Lifestyle Program (HELP)

Healthy Eating Lifestyle Program's (HELP) main goal was to help overweight children aged 5-12 years and their families adopt healthier eating habits and increase physical activity. The program intervened with children before they reach adolescents and focused on long-term lifestyle changes in order to prevent the most long-term morbidity. The program emphasized on making better food choices, integrating activity into every day life, and decreasing screen-time, rather that focusing on short term dieting.

HELP's goals were to: reduced weight (BMI < 85% for age in children), percent of body fat, and screen time; improve exercise tolerance, food selection, and exercise and nutrition self-efficacy; normalize cholesterol and lipid levels; decrease fast food purchases; and increase exercise frequency.

Community health promoters provided outreach education to local community organizations and sought referrals of potential program participants. All potential participants and their parents received a health screen along with an activity and nutrition assessment. Overweight and obese children and their primary caretaker participated in five-week series workshops held in local community centers. Parents were also offered the opportunity to join a weekly support group facilitated by a social worker. Once families completed the five series workshop, they received a free one-year membership to a local community center that offered a variety of exercise classes/activities. Six months following the completion of the workshop, families gathered for a sixth session to receive a second round of health, activity, and nutrition assessments.

HELP was offered by four members of the Los Angeles Chronic Disease Management Consortium: California Hospital Medical Center (CHMC), Good Samaritan Hospital, Huntington Hospital, and the National Health Foundation, who served as the evaluator. It was funded by a grant from the UniHealth Foundation.

The program's goal is to help overweight children aged 5-12 years and their families adopt healthier eating habits and increase physical activity.

Between October 2005 and August 2007, 1,135 children and 991 parents registered for HELP, and 458 children and 402 adults completed the program. Eighty percent of adult and 81% of children participants were Hispanic.

A comparison of pre and post health, activity, and nutrition assessments revealed that 69% of children improved their nutrition scores, 73.5% improved their fitness scores, and 92% decreased the amount of time they spent watching television. In addition, 53% of the adults lost weight, 61% improved their nutrition scores, and 79% improved their fitness scores.

Overall, HELP participants experienced a significant BMI z-score reduction of 0.16 (P<0.001).