An Evaluation of WNY School District Wellness Policies

School wellness policies are essential to preventing adverse health outcomes for both children and adults in schools.

Assist in an evaluation of school wellness policies to support wellness policy development and implementation.

Project description

Research assistants are needed in the Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences to work on an evaluation of WNY school wellness policies. Research assistants will gather local school district wellness policies through an online search and use the standardized Wellness School Assessment Tool (WellSAT; https://wscc.wellsat.org), Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC; includes 10 components of school wellness) to score the comprehensiveness and strength of the policies. Research assistants will be involved in the creation of data reports that will be shared with schools/school districts to support their wellness policy development and implementation.

This research experience will be under the leadership of Dr. Ann Kuhn, who conducts community-based studies in the area of school health, physical activity, and wellness policy implementation.

All incoming research assistants must be able to commit to at least 8-10 hours of research per week. There will be more research opportunities in Spring 2023 for in-person data collection with school teachers in the form of conducting semi-structured interviews to understand needs/barriers to implementing school employee wellness programs and collecting physical activity data using accelerometers.

Interested students can apply by emailing a resume to annkuhn@buffalo.edu, using "Student research assistant resume Fall 2022" as the subject of the email.

Project outcome

The specific outcomes of this project will be identified by the faculty mentor at the beginning of your collaboration. 

Project details

Timing, eligibility and other details
Length of commitment About a semester  (3-5 months)
Start time Fall 2022
In-person, remote, or hybrid? Hybrid
Level of collaboration Small group project (2-3 students)
Benefits Research experience, academic credit, volunteer
Who is eligible All undergraduate students 

Project mentor

Ann Kuhn

Assistant Professor

Exercise and Nutrition Sciences

Phone: (716) 829-6788

Email: annkuhn@buffalo.edu

Start the project

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Preparation activities

The specific preparation activities for this project will be customized through discussions between you and your project mentor. Please be sure to ask them for the instructions to complete the required preparation activities.

Keywords

school, health, wellness, policy, exercise and nutrition sciences