Using the Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) to assess barriers to healthy eating and active living in a low-income community

• Published in: Evaluation and program planning Vol. 59; pp. 41 - 46
• Main Authors: Ylitalo, Kelly R., Umstattd Meyer, M.Renée, Stone, Kahler, Doyle, Eva I., Curtis, Ramona
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2016; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Activities; Adolescent; Adult; Barriers; Child; Child, Preschool; Community; Community assessment for public health emergency response; Community Relations; Consumption; Cross-Sectional Studies; Eating behavior; Eating Habits; Exercise; Female; Fruit; Health Behavior; Health disparities; Health education; Health promotion; Healthy Diet - economics; Healthy Diet - psychology; Healthy eating; Healthy food; Healthy habits; Households; Humans; Low Income; Low income groups; Male; Middle Aged; Neighborhoods; Obesity; Physical activity; Poverty; Public health; Residence Characteristics; Socioeconomic Factors; Surveys and Questionnaires - utilization; Underserved populations; United States; Young Adult; United States > US; Obesity; Healthy eating; Physical activity; Community assessment for public health emergency response
• ISSN: 0149-7189; 1873-7870
• DOI: 10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2016.08.003

•Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) is useful.•The method is useful for geographically-defined communities to assess healthy living.•This method builds academic-practice-community partnership in low-income areas. Insufficient physical activity and unhealthy eating behaviors are major contributors to the obesity epidemic in the United States. Identifying health behaviors and disparities in underserved communities is needed to guide the development of targeted interventions. The Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) is a set of tools designed for public health emergencies, but the utility of CASPER in non-emergency settings has not been explored. The purpose of this study was to use CASPER to obtain information on household-based behaviors of and barriers to fruit/vegetable consumption and physical activity, and explore the utility of these methods for future health assessments. Cross-sectional survey data included households (n=100) in a low-income neighborhood. Half of adults did not meet recommendations for fruit/vegetable consumption and 20% reported no physical activity during the previous week. Cost was significantly associated with healthy eating and physical activity in our community. Four primary advantages of using CASPER methodology included a user-friendly CDC toolkit, yield of a representative community sample with a relatively low sample size, low-cost/low-tech requirements for implementation, and the strengthening of an academic-practice-community partnership. Our work demonstrates the utility of CASPER for assessing healthy living in a geographically-defined community where household health behaviors and barriers are unknown.