Research conducted by the ARCH team uses a socio-ecological approach to understand how we can create supportive environments for chronic disease prevention. Our research projects typically focus on one or more levels of the socio-ecological model (SEM), with the goal of creating supportive environments where people live, learn or play. Our projects involve a range of settings, such as schools, recreation and sports settings, early years settings, and the health system. Examples of projects include:
Healthy eating in Recreation and Sports Settings (HERSS, 2014-16)
Recreation and Sports Settings (RSS) are used by individuals and families for leisure-time pursuits, often of an active nature. Recent evidence suggests that individuals may see food and fitness as competing priorities and that, faced with time pressures, families prioritize leisure time physical activity over the preparation and consumption of healthy meals. RSS therefore offer an important opportunity for both physical activity and healthy eating to occur simultaneously, mitigating the challenge of prioritizing one over the other. The Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness has spearheaded the development of guidelines for recreation and sports settings and has supported the collection of baseline data to describe current food environments in recreation and sport settings, as well as common food practices and key barriers and facilitators to improving the nutritional quality of foods and beverages served and sold within this setting. The purpose of our research funded as aPopulation Health Intervention Research grant by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research is to study the uptake, implementation, and impact of nutrition guidelines in recreation and sport settings at the population level. In addition to enabling us to monitor and describe changes in facility food environments as a result of guideline implementation, this project will help us to understand the process of implementation in different recreation and sports settings in Nova Scotia.
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