Identifying common metrics for evaluating school-based healthy lifestyles programs in seven countries: introduction to workshop proceedings.

BACKGROUND: The worldwide childhood obesity pandemic highlights the need to instill healthy lifestyle habits in children and youths, in particular fostering and facilitating healthy eating behaviors and a high degree of physical activity. To achieve this it's important to strengthen local program evaluation capacity. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the proceedings of the seven-country School-Based Healthy Lifestyles Program Evaluation Workshop held in Granada, Spain, on 13-14 September 2013 under the auspices of the Mondelez International Foundation. METHODS: Synthesis of workshop proceedings including illustrative participants' quotes. RESULTS: All seven countries' programs were successful at developing and presenting their Program Impact Pathway (PIP) analysis at the workshop. All countries found their PIP analyses useful and improved them based on feedback received at the workshop. CONCLUSIONS: As illustrated by the participants' quotes the PIP analyses proved to be very useful in leading to in-depth critical thinking and discussion about ways to improve the programs' processes, oversight, and outcomes.

Driving social impact with common global indicators for healthy lifestyle programs: lessons learned.

BACKGROUND: Partnerships between corporate entities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in delivering community focused health and well-being programs are becoming increasingly valuable especially in the context of promoting healthy lifestyles around the globe. The Mondelez International Foundation (MIF) has funded healthy lifestyles community based programs targeting children and youth through partnership with seven global NGOs. To assess collective impact of these programs, it is crucial to identify best practices and common impact indicators that can be measured across programs. MIF therefore organized the Healthy Lifestyles Evaluation Workshop to explore these pertinent questions. OBJECTIVE: Share best practices and identify common impact indicators to measure the success of current and future MIF funded healthy lifestyles programs. METHODS: Analysis of the Program Impact Pathways (PIPs) and measured output of each of the seven programs. RESULTS: Individual and combined analysis of PIPs of the seven NGO programs led to identification of three critical impact indicators: nutrition knowledge, physical activity, and healthier eating, and also enabled NGOs to identify pathways to improve program delivery among the target population. CONCLUSIONS: This workshop enabled MIF and partner NGOs to came together to align on metrics and future engagement approaches for promoting and evaluating community based healthy lifestyles programs.