WED-032 - Assessing Youth Health in a Rural County in Ohio using MAPP 2.0

Brief Abstract Summary: Discover the critical insights from a community health assessment conducted in a rural Ohio school setting. This assessment, framed by Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP), emphasizes the need for collaboration among diverse stakeholders to improve youth health and well-being. Key findings reveal only 54.7% of students engage in adequate physical activity and alarmingly, less than 8% meet fruit and vegetable intake recommendations. Over half of the students spend more than 3 hours daily on cell phones or social media and 66.7% report insufficient sleep. These results highlight the importance of ongoing health assessments in schools to inform effective health education programs and policies, ultimately promoting healthier lifestyle choices and addressing specific health needs among youth. Furthermore, utilizing tools like Qualtrics enhances data collection and analysis, improving the accessibility and reliability of health data.

Detailed abstract description:

Background: Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) offers a framework for improving community health and well-being. It highlights the importance of engaging a diverse range of stakeholders and community members as well as the collaboration of community resources to achieve common objectives resulting in a community health needs assessment (CHNA) and a community health improvement plan (CHIP). In MAPP 2.0, Phase Two emphasizes understanding the community's health status through data collection and analysis. This community health assessment aims to examine the health and wellness of youth in a school setting in a rural county in Ohio.

Methods: The local health department and the coalition responsible for developing and monitoring the county CHIP created a survey using prior assessments and national surveys, including the YRBSS (Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey) and OHYES! (Ohio Healthy Youth Environments Survey). Researchers administered the survey in schools via Qualtrics, an online survey platform. The assessment aimed to collect data on various dimensions of health, including lifestyle factors including youth weight and BMI, physical activity, fruit and vegetable intake, sugary drink and caffeine intake, methods of losing weight, recreational screen time, and sleep. A total of 1,905 students aged 12 to 18 years of age from 10 schools in one rural county school district completed the survey. The researchers conducted descriptive statistics and chi-square analyses.

Results: Preliminary results indicated higher rates of female students self-describing themselves as slightly overweight or very overweight compared to the male students. Only 54.7% of the participants engaged in physical activity at least 60 minutes per day 5+ days a week. More students were using positive methods to lose weight compared to negative methods, yet, females had higher rates of taking on more negative methods. Less than ten percent (7.8%) of youth met recommendations for fruit intake, and fewer (4.9%) met them for vegetables. Fifty percent or more of the students spent over 3 hours a day on their cell phones and/or engaged with social media. Finally, more than half of the students (66.7%) did not get 8 or more hours of sleep.

Discussion: The findings underscore the importance of ongoing health assessments in schools to inform health education programs and policy decisions specifically regarding lifestyle behaviors. Furthermore, utilizing Qualtrics facilitated efficient data collection and analysis, enhancing the accessibility and reliability of health data among youth in a school setting. This assessment serves as a crucial step toward promoting a healthier school environment and addressing youth-specific health needs.