Facilitators and barriers to students' learning in an obesity prevention graduate program.

Childhood obesity is a major public health concern with underpinnings at the individual, family, community and societal levels. The Transdisciplinary Childhood Obesity Prevention Graduate Certificate Program (TOP) is an innovative graduate-level certificate program developed to train professionals to understand and address obesity from multiple perspectives using an interprofessional education (IPE) approach. Currently, there is limited knowledge on what promotes or hinders learning in IPE approaches dealing with obesity prevention. The goal of this report is to address this gap by describing facilitators and barriers to learning in a graduate-level training program. Using a qualitative research design, semi-structured interviews were collected from 23 professional students, as part of a larger program evaluation project for TOP. Thematic analysis revealed the challenges and strengths of the program that relate specifically to: its interprofessional approach, its structure, and its activities. Interprofessional exchanges were reported to expand students' learning, but adequate interprofessional representation must be maintained, and the complexity of interprofessional collaborations must also be well-coordinated. Standardising the program structure and courses for consistency across professions, and clear communication are critical to program success. Findings add to the existing literature on what promotes effective learning in a professional obesity prevention program using an IPE approach.

Educator and participant perceptions and cost analysis of stage-tailored educational telephone calls.

OBJECTIVE: To identify strengths and weaknesses of nutrition education via telephone calls as part of a larger stage-of-change tailored intervention with mailed materials. DESIGN: Evaluative feedback was elicited from educators who placed the calls and respondents who received the calls. SETTING: An internet and telephone survey of 10 states in the midwestern United States. PARTICIPANTS: 21 educators in 10 states reached via the internet and 50 young adults reached via telephone. VARIABLES MEASURED AND ANALYSIS: Rankings of intervention components, ratings of key aspects of educational calls, and cost data (as provided by a lead researcher in each state) were summarized via descriptive statistics. RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS: Educational calls used 6 to 17 minutes of preparation time, required 8 to 15 minutes of contact time, and had a mean estimated cost of $5.82 per call. Low-income young adults favored print materials over educational calls. However, the calls were reported to have positive effects on motivating participants to set goals. Educators who use educational telephone calls to reach young adults, a highly mobile target audience, may require a robust and flexible contact plan.