Effects of Health Promotion Program on Healthy Eating and Exercise Behavior Modification Among Obese Children at Cheenumrai II Hospital of Health Promotion in Inburi District, Singburi Province

Abstract

     The aims of this experimental research were to examine the effectiveness of health promotion program and to determine changes in psychological and behavioral variables after the implementation of behavioral intervention as those between intervention and control groups. The samples were 24 children at Cheenumrai II Hospital of Health Promotion, which 12 of those were assigned to the intervention group, and other 12 were assigned to the control group.
The intervention group was implemented with one class behavioral intervention program which consists of two activities : 1) Activity to educate on fundamental knowledge of obesity, nutrition and exercise, and cultivate the attitude towards the behaviors through the eight sub-activities, and 2) Activity to shape healthy eating behaviors and proper physical activity behavior by using the processs within 5 weeks. The control group received regular program from hospital, and make self record about eating and exercise in daily life. This experimental design was pretest-posttest control group design and ABF control group design. Data were collected by means of a test of knowledge about obesity, self-reported questionnaires of attitude towards healthy eating and physical activity including daily life’s record forms of eating and exercise. Data were mainly analyzed by using means, percentages and paired t-test.
     The results showed that the intervention group had positively significant increased knowledge about obesity, attitude towards healthy eating behavior and attitude towards proper physical activity after the program, and more than the control group (p<0.01). Secondly, after the intervention, the results showed that healthy eating behavior of intervention group was significantly better than before entering the program (p<0.01) but proper physical activity behavior intervention group was not different from the control group (p=0.11). 
     The health promotion program on healthy eating and exercise can improve knowledge about obesity, attitude towards healthy eating behavior, attitude to wards proper physical activity and healthy eating behavior.