Grant: Doctoral Research Award - PA: Nutrition and Childhood Development (SHOPP)

Childhood obesity is a major public health concern in Canada. Increasingly, it is important to determine what puts youth at risk for becoming overweight or obese, how to improve prevention efforts, and how to develop more effective interventions. Diet has been identified as an important lifestyle factor that contributes to weight gain and obesity. The family and school environments are known to influence adolescent's eating behaviours but little is known about the combined influence of factors in these environments on changes in eating habits as adolescents participate in an intervention to improve healthy eating and physical activity. The purpose of this study is to investigate how factors in the family and school environments influence dietary behaviours in adolescents. It is hypothesized that access and availability of unhealthy foods in the family and school environment, unhealthy food modelling, and frequency of purchased meals will be associated with poorer dietary habits and will impede dietary behaviour change as adolescents progress through the intervention. Data will be collected from 150 overweight or obese adolescents and one of their parents over an 8-month period in 2010/2012. A combination of web-based surveys and 24-hour recalls will be used to collect information from adolescents and parents about their dietary behaviours. Results from this research will provide timely evidence that informs obesity prevention efforts and the development of more comprehensive public health interventions.