Cost and Cost-Effectiveness of Students for Nutrition and eXercise (SNaX).

Auteur(s) :
Bogart LM., Cowgill BO., Klein DJ., Uyeda K., Binkle DG., Schuster MA., Ladapo JA., Stevens ER.
Date :
Sep, 2015
Source(s) :
Academic pediatrics. #: p
Adresse :
Department of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY; Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY. Electronic address: [email protected]

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OBJECTIVE
To examine the cost and cost-effectiveness of implementing Students for Nutrition and eXercise (SNaX), a 5-week middle school-based obesity-prevention intervention combining school-wide environmental changes, multimedia, encouragement to eat healthy school cafeteria foods, and peer-led education.

METHODS
Five intervention and 5 control middle schools (mean enrollment, 1520 students) from the Los Angeles Unified School District participated in a randomized controlled trial of SNaX. Acquisition costs for materials and time and wage data for employees involved in implementing the program were used to estimate fixed and variable costs. Cost-effectiveness was determined using the ratio of variable costs to program efficacy outcomes.

RESULTS
The costs of implementing the program over 5 weeks were $5433.26 per school in fixed costs and $2.11 per student in variable costs, equaling a total cost of $8637.17 per school, or $0.23 per student per day. This investment yielded significant increases in the proportion of students served fruit and lunch and a significant decrease in the proportion of students buying snacks. The cost-effectiveness of the program, per student over 5 weeks, was $1.20 per additional fruit served during meals, $8.43 per additional full-priced lunch served, $2.11 per additional reduced-price/free lunch served, and $1.69 per reduction in snacks sold.

CONCLUSIONS
SNaX demonstrated the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of a middle school-based obesity-prevention intervention combining school-wide environmental changes, multimedia, encouragement to eat healthy school cafeteria foods, and peer-led education. Its cost is modest and unlikely to be a significant barrier to adoption for many schools considering its implementation.

Source : Pubmed
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