Sustainability Via Active Garden Education: The Sustainability Action Plan Model and Process

Overview

Journal Int J Environ Res Public Health

Publisher MDPI

Specialties Environmental Health
Public Health

Date 2022 May 14

PMID 35564909

Authors

Rebecca E Lee

Jacob Szeszulski

Elizabeth Lorenzo

Anel Arriola

Meg Bruening

Paul A Estabrooks

Jennie L Hill

Teresia M OConnor

Gabriel Q Shaibi

Erica G Soltero

Michael Todd

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Sustainability of intervention programming is challenging to achieve under real world conditions, since few models exist and many studies do not plan far beyond the funding period. Programming content in early care and education centers (ECECs) is often driven by guidelines. However, implementation is very sensitive to contextual factors, such as the setting and implementer (teacher) characteristics. This paper presents the model, definitions, and methodology used for the sustainability action plan capitalizing on a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, developed for a multi-site, multi-level garden-based childhood obesity prevention study, Sustainability via Active Garden Education (SAGE). The Ecologic Model of Obesity is applied to develop a sustainability action plan (SAP) and accompanying measures to link early care and education (ECE) environment, the community, policies, and classroom practices to an early childhood obesity prevention program. The SAGE SAP provides an example of how to iteratively evaluate and refine sustainability processes for an obesity prevention intervention utilizing CBPR approaches and will be applied to assess the sustainability of SAGE in a cluster randomized controlled trial. This SAP model can also help inform intervention delivery and scalability within ECECs.

Citing Articles

Process evaluation findings from Strong Hearts, Healthy Communities 2.0: a cardiovascular disease prevention intervention for rural women.

Szeszulski J, Rolke L, Ayine P, Bailey R, Demment M, Eldridge G Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2024; 21(1):122.

PMID: 39438920 PMC: 11515669. DOI: 10.1186/s12966-024-01670-y.

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