A TOOLKIT FOR DEVELOPING CHILDREN’S PROGRAMMESIn July, the World Heart Federation brought members and partners together to share experiences from their activities promoting a healthy diet and physical activity, through a two-day workshop held at the Geneva Headquarters. Working with the Indian NGO HRIDAY (Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth) and Community Interventions for Health (CIH), World Heart Federation members from India, Ireland, Finland, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, South Africa and the UK participated. The workshop was held just prior to the 20th conference of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education. International partners including the World Health Organization and the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) also attended to share their expertise and perspectives. Finding what works in low-resource settings“There are more and more models for promoting healthy diet and physical activity, especially among children,” said Monika Arora, Senior Director of HRIDAY “but most of the models and the evidence on their impact have been generated in high-resource settings. Some of these approaches are just not feasible in low-resource environments, and of those that are, differences in culture, economic or social context may still make them less effective.” Brenda Fenton, an expert in evaluation for MATRIX Health Solutions, has developed evaluation methodology for CIH. CIH works to develop and evaluate the impact and cost-effectivness of comprehensive interventions for poor diet, tobacco use, and lack of physical activity that can be adapted to different cultures and communities. “One problem,” she admits “is that the kind of research we typically use to evaluate projects is way beyond the budget and skills of many implementing organizations in low-income settings, so it is hard to reliably evaluate what works in different settings.” Collecting tools for actionThe workshop, which was the second of three workshops planned as part of the World Heart Federation Kids on the Move project, focused on building an online toolkit to help organizations in low-resource settings develop effective activities. “The World Heart Federation approached us to help develop the toolkit” said Monika Arora. “We were eager to apply our expertise in designing, implementing and evaluating programmes in India to share our experiences and also to learn from other organizations doing similar work around the world. This project is an excellent opportunity for the same.” Working in small groups, participants gave input into the structure of the toolkit and suggested the materials that would help them most in developing their current programmes. The toolkit will be a resource for those engaged in generating awareness about healthy diet and physical activity, and for those who develop materials and services for and who implement children’s programmes; members involved in creating it will also be piloting the resource before it is made public. Enhancing impact through advocacyA considerable number of World Heart Federation members work to promote healthy diet and physical activity in low- and middle-income countries. And the aim is that the toolkit and the process of creating it will help them develop programmes. In addition, factsheets and materials to help members advocate for change in the policies and environmental factors that shape individual choices are also being added to help increase the impact of the toolkit. For further information: | |||||||
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