Equipping public health professionals for youth engagement: lessons learned from a 2-year pilot study.

There is strong evidence of the positive role that youth engagement programs and policies play in creating resiliency and producing positive outcomes among youth populations, such as delaying or avoiding the onset of risk-taking behaviors. Research also suggests that achieving positive outcomes ideally includes influence from the individual, the family, the school, the community, and the field of public health (available in A Research Report and Recommendations for Ontario Public Health Association). The authors conducted a comprehensive evaluation of a 2-year pilot project designed to increase the application of engagement and resiliency theory, knowledge, and skills among public health professionals engaging students from Grades 6, 7, and 8 (11- to 14-year-olds).

Effective components for nutrition interventions: a review and application of the literature.

A review of the nutrition intervention literature was conducted for Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) to develop a provincial nutrition and healthy body weight strategy. Controlled trials that were conducted between 1994 and 2000 in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand were included. Fifteen interventions were included, 10 of which showed significant intervention effect and 5 reporting negative effect.