Effect of 12-Week Lifestyle Intervention on Behavioral, Anthropometry and Biochemical Profile of School Children in Chandigarh, India Prabhushankar T 1 , Thakur JS 1* , Jaswal N 1 , Bharti B 2 and Bhansali A 3 1 School of Public Health, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India 2 Advanced Pediatric Center, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India 3 Department of Endocrinology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India * Corresponding author: Jarnail Singh Thakur, Professor, School of Public Health, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, Tel: +91-946-360-2173; E-mail: jsthakur64@gmail.com Received date: Jul 01, 2015; Accepted date: Sep 16, 2015; Published date: Sep 29, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Prabhushankar T, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Objective: The present study assessed the effect of a 12 weeks lifestyle intervention program on health behavior, anthropometric measures and biochemical profile in selected schools. Study design: A community-based intervention study. 8 schools were randomly allotted to control or intervention group. Sample size of 180 students in each group were assessed for health behavior, anthropometry and biochemical profile. Students in intervention group were subjected to lifestyle intervention comprising of life skill sessions, lifestyle diary, physical activity period daily, healthier option in school canteen, etc., followed by post assessment. Results: 384 students were enrolled (191 from intervention and 193 from control schools). 97% of them were evaluated at the end of the intervention. A significant increase in the behavior of children playing out in free time was found (p<0.05). Significant number of children started watching television for <2 hours (p<0.0001.)Proportion of children who opted for fruits in case food was not prepared at home increased from 57.4% to 67.9% (p<0.05). No significant changes in the biochemical and anthropometric parameters were found. Conclusions: 12-week lifestyle intervention is feasible in school settings and helped in changing health behavior of the students. Longer duration of intervention may be required for change in anthropometry and biochemical profile. Keywords: Lifestyle; Intervention; Behavioral; Anthropometry; Biochemical Introduction Early interventions are critical to improve health, nutrition and development of young children. is fact is substantiated in the World Development Report 2007 while focusing on ages 12-24 years which states that ‘decisions during five youth transitions have the biggest long term impact on how human capital is kept safe, developed and deployed…’ and that ‘policies and institutions affect the risks, the opportunities and the outcomes of youth and their families’[1]. ere are over 1.2 billion adolescents aged 10–19 years in the world, constituting 18 per cent of world population. Worldwide, at least 12% of the adolescents are living with a chronic condition both as a function of the increasing incidence and improving survival aſter childhood and adolescent illnesses [2]. e Global School Health Survey (2007) in CBSE schools across India revealed that 1.5% of the students aged 13-15 years were overweight and around 7-8% of them were at risk of being overweight. It also revealed that only 30% of the students were physically active for at least 60 minutes per day on all 7 days of a week. Around 4% of the students use some form of tobacco, of which 1.5% of students were known to smoke [3]. School settings have long been recommended as an excellent health promoting environment where promoting healthy eating can be an integral and acceptable component of school curriculum [4]. Various strategies have been adopted like office based motivational interviewing by pediatricians, hospital based interventions and school based interventions [5-7]. A lot of school based lifestyle intervention programs have been successful in many parts of the world and a new framework for health promoting schools has been prepared by WHO India and Central Board of Secondary Education. ‘Trim and Fit’ program is a school based lifestyle intervention program implemented throughout Singapore and has successfully resulted to decrease in the prevalence of obesity among school children [8]. e present study aimed to implement a 12 weeks long, short-term, school-based lifestyle intervention program among selected school children and assess its effect on their changing health behavior and various anthropometric measures. Materials and Methods is community-based intervention study was carried out in UT Chandigarh (India) from July 2008 to March 2009 including a 12-week long health promotion intervention program. Prabhushankar, et al., J Community Med Health Educ 2015, 5:5 DOI: 10.4172/2161-0711.1000367 Research Article Open Access J Community Med Health Educ ISSN:2161-0711 JCMHE, an Open Access Volume 5 • Issue 5 • 1000367 J o u r n a l o f C o m m u n i t y M e d i c i n e & H e a l t h E d u c a t i o n ISSN: 2161-0711 Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education