Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Our previous research has identified the Health Promoting Schools Program (HPSP) as very effective in promoting healthy eating and active living and preventing childhood obesity. While better health behaviors and improved health status are important to public health decision makers, cost-effectiveness and return-on-investment are also important. However, economic evaluations of these programs have yielded mixed results and there is no Canadian data available yet. We propose to conduct an economic evaluation of the HPSP by comparing its program costs with changes in proportions of obesity, health care costs, and quality of life of the Canadian population. We will develop a mathematical model to represent the lifetime progression of school children over five obesity-related health states, including: underweight, normal, overweight, obesity and death. Existing data from Statistics Canada's surveys, the assessments of the HPSP in Nova Scotia and Alberta, and from Medline and Cochrane searches will be used to parameterise the model. The model will project the trends of obesity epidemics in Canada and assess the long-term impacts of the HPSP on future disease burden. The outcome measures include program and health care costs, proportions of obesity and chronic conditions avoided, savings in medical expenditures and absenteeism costs, and quality-adjusted life years gained by the intervention. Findings of this study will inform resource allocation and justify investments in school-based health promotion. Moreover, effective school-based program in preventing childhood obesity that will also save future health care costs may become a key strategy in curbing the obesity epidemic in Canada.