Abstract
Background/Aims To promote health through the prevention and reduction of obesity, organizations are implementing healthy eating and active living (HEAL) strategies in local communities. LiveWell Colorado (LWC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire and advance policy, environmental, and lifestyle changes to prevent and reduce obesity, provides funding to 24 underserved communities across Colorado to develop place-based interventions focused on built environment, food access, and policy changes that support HEAL.
Methods The Kaiser Permanente Evaluation Team (KPET) assists LWC communities in designing and measuring HEAL interventions that will have positive impact on population health. Working with community coordinators and local evaluators to identify key strategies, KPET estimates the impact of community efforts to prevent and reduce obesity at the population level. This evaluation methodology is referred to as “Population Dose.” Dose is an estimate of the impact of community level interventions on an average resident’s behavior. It is initially measured by individual strategy to determine both potential dose, based on the planned strategy, and actual dose, based on analysis of the implemented strategy. To assess Population Dose, community strategies are then clustered by behavioral outcome and given a quantitative Dose Rating that is based on reach and strength data for all strategies in each outcome category. The rating is used to estimate the impact of HEAL interventions across the entire population, not just for those that were directly affected by the intervention.
Results Using the Population Dose framework, KPET has seen shifts in HEAL behaviors at both the school and community levels. One example is in LiveWell Longmont, where strategies focusing on Safe Routes to School, Physical Activity Breaks, and Physical Education have an overall dose rating of 6.63% which is considered “High Dose”. This rating indicates that it is highly likely that there has been an increase in physical activity of school-aged children in Longmont.
Conclusions The Population Dose framework is an informative tool for assessing population level impact of HEAL strategies. It can be used to assess planned or current strategies to address obesity and assist in decisions about which outcome will have the most impact on obesity.
