Project Daire: Derry/Londonderry as the Nexus City for Food, Education, Trust and Health

Queen's University, Belfast1,080 enrolled

Overview

Project Daire is a randomised-controlled factorial design trial working in partnership with primary schools and local food producers evaluating two interventions designed to improve primary school children's knowledge of and interest in food and where it comes from, with the ultimate aim of driving improvement in health, well-being and educational status. Key Stage 1 and 2 pupils will be recruited from 15 primary schools in the North West of Northern Ireland and will be randomised to one of four intervention arms: i) 'Engage', ii) 'Nourish', iii) 'Engage' and 'Nourish' and iv) Delayed of duration up to 6 months. Study outcomes include food knowledge, attitudes, trust, diet, behaviour, health and wellbeing and will be collected at baseline and six months.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

1,080

Conditions

Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice

Interventions

EngageBEHAVIORAL

The Engage intervention was developed with input from primary school teachers and includes a range of age-appropriate educational activities related to food. Activities include videos, lesson plans, worksheets, games, talks/visits from experts, visits to industrial partners and other local food-related centres of interest and practical activities such as experiments. All 'Engage' material is mapped to the Northern Ireland School Curriculum. The 'Engage' intervention is structured into three broad topics: Farm to Fork; Pleasure on a Plate and Food Futures. Engage resources were provided to schools electronically and in hard copy and teachers delivered most of the content, with the exception of several sessions which were delivered by visiting scientists.

NourishBEHAVIORAL

The Nourish intervention is a school food environment intervention which included weekly healthy snack provision supplied by food industry partners, enhancement of canteen dining area (café style, tablecloths, centre pieces, bunting and menu boards, healthy eating posters), attendance at Tasting Days held in Higher Education Colleges (children were encouraged to try new foods provided by industry partners and received stamps on 'food passports' in return) and sensory educational and cookery activities.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 6 YearsMax age: 11 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Mainstream primary schools willing to be randomly assigned to an intervention, * Mainstream primary schools willing to engage with the intervention and implement it with their pupils, * Mainstream primary schools willing to facilitate pre and post-test data collection in their setting, * Mainstream primary schools within the North West region of Northern Ireland. * Pupils in Primary 3 (Key Stage 1) and Primary 7 (Key Stage 2) of participating schools were eligible to take part. Exclusion criteria * Secondary schools * Non-mainstream schools * Schools not in the North West region of Northern Ireland

Locations (1)

Centre for Public Health, Queen's University Belfast

Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Change in KIDSCREEN-10 score at 6 months

Validated well-being questionnaire for children. Completed by KS1 and KS2 pupils.This is an 11-item instrument answered on a 5-point scale and results in one global HRQoL score. Most of the items are formulated positively and in concordance with the scoring, which means a higher score reflects a higher HRQoL. However, some items are formulated negatively and as a consequence the scoring has to be recoded. The scoring method results in T-values with scale means around 50 and standard deviations around 10 with higher values indicating higher HRQoL.