The COPE Healthy Lifestyles TEEN Program: Immediate and Six Month Effects on High School Adolescents’ BMI, Psychosocial Outcomes and Academic Performance

Melnyk, Bernadette Mazurek

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the immediate and six-month post-intervention effects of the COPE (Creating Opportunities for Personal Empowerment) Healthy Lifestyles TEEN (Thinking, Emotions, Exercise and Nutrition) Program on the healthy lifestyle behaviors, BMI, psychosocial outcomes and academic performance of high school adolescents in a large metropolitan city in the southwest region of the United States.

Methods: A cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted in 11 high schools. The COPE program is a 15-session cognitive behavioral skills building intervention with 20 minutes of physical activity, which was taught by teachers and integrated into the teens' health course.

The attention control program is a 15-session program that covered common teen health topics. Main outcomes included healthy lifestyle behaviors and BMI. Secondary outcomes included mental health as assessed by teen self-report on the Beck Youth Inventory, self-report of alcohol and drug use, social skills as rated on the Social Skills Rating System© by the teachers who were blind to study group, and academic performance as measured by the teens' health course grade.

Results. Post-intervention, COPE teens had significantly greater steps per day and a lower BMI than Healthy Teens. COPE teens also had significantly higher average scores on the Cooperation, Assertion and Academic subscales of the Social Skills Rating System. Alcohol use was 11.17% in the COPE group and 21.46% in the Healthy Teens group. COPE teens had a higher mean health course grade than control teens. At 6 months following the intervention, COPE teens had a lower mean BMI than Healthy Teens. Further, COPE decreased the proportion of teens who were overweight/obese over time versus an increase in control adolescents.

Conclusion. COPE can improve a multitude of short- and more long-term outcomes in high school teens, including physical activity, BMI, social skills, alcohol use and academic performance.