Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

ICS Travel Awards:In years 1994 to 1997, in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake located near Montreal, the Kateri Memorial Hospital with Kahnawake Education Center developed an elementary school diabetes prevention curriculum. The goal was to teach children healthy eating habits, and active lifestyle to reduce obesity and diabetes among Kanienkehaka population.The curriculum has three sections: nutrition, fitness, and lifestyles & diabetes divided into 10, 45-minute lessons for grades 1 to 6. The objective of this study is to understand how the health education curriculum is being taught in Kahnawake elementary schools. We also want to understand the factors that caused or prevented the success of the curriculum. The participants of this study are teachers, curriculum authors,parents and school principals. Questionnaires will be first given to teachers in the Kahnawake elementary schools. The questionnaire will give us information on the number of curriculum lessons that have been taught, the number of teachers that taught the curriculum and the number of students who received the curriculum in the years 2009/2010, and 2010/2011. Then, one on one interview with two of the school principals will take place in order to obtain their opinions on the curriculum. A form of group discussion known as talking circle will also be conducted with parents, teachers, and curriculum authors to better understand the strengths and challenges of the curriculum. All the discussions and the interviews will be recorded, and emerging ideas will be identified. To our knowledge, this project would be one of the few studies that focuses on evaluating a long-term school based diabetes prevention curriculum. The results obtained from this project can provide knowledge on the challenges and the strengths faced with a health education program. The findings would be used to make recommendations for revision or development of a new health education curriculum for the community of Kahnawake.