P3.O299: Evaluating the Impact of Pick-Up Sports and Health: A Service-Learning Model to Promote Health Literacy and Health Careers among School-Aged Children in Upper Manhattan

Background: Pick Up Sports and Health (PUSH) is an intervention aimed at promoting health literacy and health careers among school-aged children (SAC) in communities such as Washington Heights and Harem in New York. Having iterated our model across settings and age groups over the last 2 years, PUSH’s current model offers bi-monthly after-school programming in elementary schools in low-income neighborhoods. Our intervention recruits students from the medical, public health, dental and nutrition schools across Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) to volunteer as Coaches (Health Professions Student Coaches “HPSCs”) to meaningfully engage with over 200 elementary school students longitudinally. PUSH fosters this interaction by encouraging HPSCs to mentor youth through informal sporting events followed by health lessons that address health disparities within the community. Through a partnership with a community activist and coach of thirty years and the New York Department of Health and Hygiene, PUSH maintains relevant and accurate lesson plans and sporting activities for SAC. To better understand the efficacy of our current model, PUSH aimed to conduct a quality improvement project to uncover program strengths and elicit areas of future growth.

Methods: PUSH developed a survey to distribute to elementary school youth immediately following PUSH events with a goal of assessing three potential quality improvement areas among SAC: satisfaction with PUSH's current model, the influence of PUSH on health behaviors, and the influence of PUSH on SAC’s aspirations to pursue health careers. In addition, this study will use surveys to elucidate the impact of the service-learning component of our model on HPSCs.

Results: Preliminary analysis of quantitative and qualitative feedback from PUSH participants suggests high participant satisfaction, with 73% expressing happiness or high satisfaction and 27% remaining neutral. Impressively, 100% of SAC retained health information from previous lessons. Regarding career aspirations, 55% show interest in health careers, 36% remain neutral, and only 10% express disinterest. Parental feedback also indicates high program satisfaction, with 80% highly satisfied and 20% satisfied.

Conclusion: Preliminary data demonstrates that the use of informal mentorship through a pick up sports framework followed by health lessons is an effective and reproducible mechanism to encourage the adoption of healthy behaviors and aspirations for health careers among SAC.