Using Smoke-Free and Tobacco-Free policies on college and university campuses as an example this article discusses these initiatives in the context of the role of health educators and health education programs. Issues raised are ones that health educators need to consider in any intervention effort. While the importance of intervention is well…

Background: Behavioral interventions to prevent pediatric obesity have shown inconsistent results across the field. Studying what happens within the "black box" of these interventions and how differences in implementation lead to different outcomes will help researchers develop more effective interventions. Aim: To compare the…

Childhood obesity continues to be a major concern in the United States, warranting a comprehensive approach. However, the majority of research studies continue to neglect the influence of peers on dietary behaviors. The present descriptive study aimed to provide information about the ways peers directly shape dietary choices via food exchanges…

Globally, paediatric obesity causes widespread concern, and the role of ethnicity is an important focus. Investigating how culture can mediate health-related behaviour through ideas about bodies, food and physical activity, while addressing a notion that the Pakistani community in Norway is particularly conservative and slow to change, this…

Background: Rates of obesity have risen disproportionately for ethnic minority youth in the United States. School-based programs may be the most comprehensive and cost-effective way to implement primary prevention in children. In this study we evaluated the effect of a school-based obesity prevention on the outcome of body mass index percentile…

"What about Health Educators? Nutrition Education for Allied Health Professionals" describes an important issue in health care that is the provision of nutrition education. Obesity and chronic disease rates are rapidly increasing. Due to increase in the prevalence rates of obesity and nutrition-related chronic diseases, there is a growing need for…

This article introduces the notion of genetic essentialist biases: cognitive biases associated with essentialist thinking that are elicited when people encounter arguments that genes are relevant for a behavior, condition, or social group. Learning about genetic attributions for various human conditions leads to a particular set of thoughts…

Exergames are videogames that require gross motor activity, thereby combining gaming with physical activity. This study examined the role of competitive versus cooperative exergame play on short-term changes in executive function skills, following a 10-week exergame training intervention. Fifty-four low-income overweight and obese African American…

Background: Although studies have shown that school-based obesity interventions can be effective, little is known about how to translate and implement programs into real-world school settings. Methods: Semistructured interviews were conducted in spring 2012 with 19 key informants who participated in a multifaceted childhood obesity intervention…

Identification of the relationships between adolescent overweight and obesity and physical activity and a range of intrapersonal and interpersonal factors is necessary to develop relevant interventions which target the health needs of adolescents. This study examined adolescent body mass index (BMI) and participation in moderate and vigorous…

Introduction: Weight management is a new public health role for community pharmacists in many countries. Lack of expertise is one of the key barriers to counseling obese patients. We evaluated the comparative efficacy of three alternative continuing education (CE) meetings on weight management. Methods: We designed a randomized controlled trial…

The goal of the current study was to assess the efficacy and acceptability of a web-based tutorial (Child Health Matters, CHM) designed to improve school nurses' communications with families about pediatric weight-related health issues. Using a randomized wait-list control design, a nationally representative sample of school nurses was assigned to…