STUDY PROTOCOL article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 – 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1521438
Provisionally accepted
- 1 Department of Kinesiology, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada
- 2 Quebec Heart and Lung Institute Research Center, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada
- 3 Centre Nutrition, santé et société (NUTRISS), Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods (INAF), Université Laval, Quebec, Canada
- 4 Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la formation et la profession enseignante (CRIFPE), Université Laval, Quebec, Canada
- 5 School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
- 6 Fondation Tremplin Santé, Quebec, Canada
The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
Introduction: During the summer holidays, children often demonstrate reduced physical activity and poorer dietary habits, largely attributed to the lack of structured routines and supervision that school provides. Summer camps have the potential to offer youth engaging and organized activities and serve as an environment for promoting healthy lifestyle habits. This paper presents the protocol for the evaluation of the Power Up program, a study which aims to evaluate counselors’ satisfaction with the Power Up services, trainings, and tools, their engagement in the program, as well as their self-efficacy and intention to promote physical activity, nutrition, and well-being through the camp environment. The secondary aim is to assess the program’s effectiveness on physical activity, sedentary behaviors, and healthy eating among counselors and campers, along with the determinants of these behaviors. Methods: This quasi-experimental study will evaluate the efficacy of implementing Power Up, a healthy lifestyle promotion program in summer camps. Power Up offers a range of services, trainings, and tools designed to assist camps in promoting healthy lifestyle habits, all developed based on the Social Cognitive Theory. Camps can choose from various services based on their needs, including personalized support, funding, challenge-based activities and contests. Training for camp counselors is provided with additional advanced workshops and webinars available. The program also includes over 150 tools to promote healthy lifestyle habits, such as physical activity, sedentary behaviors, and healthy eating. This study plans to enroll counselors aged 15 to 21 and campers aged 8 to 12 in two Canadian provinces from multiple summer camps over three years. Due to constraints that complicate the inclusion of a control group, an implementation score will be used to document the program’s effects based on its degree of implementation in the camps. Descriptive statistics and MIXED linear models for repeated measures will be used to assess the effects of time, group (high vs. low implementation) and their interactions on behaviors and their determinants. Conclusions: The results will provide evidence regarding the effectiveness of implementing Power Up to promote the adoption of healthy lifestyle habits among counselors and campers and its effect on the camp environment.
Keywords:
Summer day camps, physical activity, Sedentary behaviors, healthy eating, campers, counselors
Received:
01 Nov 2024;
Accepted:
20 Jan 2025.
Copyright:
© 2025
Larose, Chih‐Shing Chen, Paracini, Panahi, Yessis, Tremblay and Drapeau. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted,
provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the
original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted
academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which
does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Melvin Chih‐Shing Chen, School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
Tania Paracini, Fondation Tremplin Santé, Quebec, Canada
Shirin Panahi, Department of Kinesiology, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada
Vicky Drapeau, Department of Kinesiology, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada
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