Sustainability via Active Garden Education: The Sustainability Action Plan Model and Process

Authors

Rebecca E Lee
Jacob Szeszulski
Elizabeth Lorenzo
Anel Arriola
Meg Bruening
Paul A Estabrooks
Jennie L Hill
Teresia M O'Connor
Gabriel Q Shaibi
Erica G Soltero
Michael Todd

Publication Date

5-1-2022

Journal

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

DOI

10.3390/ijerph19095511

PMID

35564909

PMCID

PMC9102810 D

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

5-1-2022

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Published Open-Access

yes

Keywords

Child, Child, Preschool, Community-Based Participatory Research, Gardening, Gardens, Health Promotion, Humans, Pediatric Obesity, Problem-Based Learning, community, organization, children, intervention study, physical activity, diet, early care and education

Abstract

Sustainability of intervention programming is challenging to achieve under real world conditions, since few models exist and many studies do not plan far beyond the funding period. Programming content in early care and education centers (ECECs) is often driven by guidelines. However, implementation is very sensitive to contextual factors, such as the setting and implementer (teacher) characteristics. This paper presents the model, definitions, and methodology used for the sustainability action plan capitalizing on a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, developed for a multi-site, multi-level garden-based childhood obesity prevention study, Sustainability via Active Garden Education (SAGE). The Ecologic Model of Obesity is applied to develop a sustainability action plan (SAP) and accompanying measures to link early care and education (ECE) environment, the community, policies, and classroom practices to an early childhood obesity prevention program. The SAGE SAP provides an example of how to iteratively evaluate and refine sustainability processes for an obesity prevention intervention utilizing CBPR approaches and will be applied to assess the sustainability of SAGE in a cluster randomized controlled trial. This SAP model can also help inform intervention delivery and scalability within ECECs.