DNS100 - Preventing Childhood Obesity: An Ecological Approach

Course Description

This course helps you learn how to take an ecological approach to preventing childhood obesity in your local community. An ecological approach involves a series of assessments—of behavior, of the environment, and then of predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors—to help diagnose the underlying causes of excessive weight gain in children. During the course, you'll use this approach, while focusing on a community where you work, via a four part project that runs through the course. The four parts are:

• Part 1 - Assessing Behavioral Factors
• Part 2 - Assessing Environmental Factors
• Part 3 - Assessing Predisposing, Enabling and Reinforcing Factors
• Part 4 - Developing Your Action Plan

When all four parts are completed, you will have identified factors related to excessive childhood weight gain in your community, prioritized which factors you should address first, and developed an action plan for intervention.

For an overview of the topics covered in this course, see the Course Outline

Course Price: $150.00

Faculty Author

Benefits to the Learner

By taking this course, you will improve your ability to address childhood obesity in your community. You will learn how to apply an ecological approach and work collaboratively to develop a more effective action plan for intervention.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

• Describe the prevalence, trends, and consequences of childhood obesity.
• Discuss the rationale for and process of applying an ecological approach for planning interventions to promote healthy eating and active living.
• List key child and adult behaviors contributing to excessive weight gain in children.
• Assess environmental factors contributing to excessive weight gain in children.
• Assess and prioritize predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors related to excessive weight gain in children.
• Discuss the rationale and approaches for building and facilitating effective collaborations for addressing nutrition issues.
• Identify appropriate intervention methods and strategies for addressing priority predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors contributing to excessive weight gain in children.
• Develop an action plan for addressing childhood obesity in your community.

Target Audience

The course is designed for professionals in nutrition, health and related fields who have completed a minimum of a B.S. degree and have 2-3 years of experience working in a community. Examples include extension educators, WIC nutritionists, public health professionals and other health educators. Others experienced in working in communities, such as those on school wellness teams or in recreation or planning departments may also benefit from taking this course.

Building community collaborations is a key component of this course, so those with experience in a community will be better able to identify potential partners. Those who want to learn more about applying the PRECEDE-PROCEED model for health program planning and evaluation to childhood obesity will find this course of particular interest.

The course is also available to groups of professionals (2-5 people) who wish to take this course as a team. Permission of the facilitator is required. Contact nutritionworks@cornell.edu for details.