The Maritime Heart Center wants to affect culture change around how our kids perceive the relationship between heart health and lifestyle. When we embarked on H2K in 2006, we knew that in order to achieve this goal we would need a solid grounding in research and science. This measured, steady approach has allowed us to grow H2K into what it is today… and will allow us to shape it into what we hope it will become: a sustainable program available across the Maritimes.
Here’s our program activity to date:
2006 – 2009: Pilot Program (1 School)
H2K began with a simple question: what affect does an adult mentor have on the rates of physical activity in children? We began our endeavor in just one school with a steering committee of healthcare professionals to answer this question.
2009-2010: Phase 1 – Pilot Phase of Research Study (1 School)
Our three-year pilot program turned up some incredibly interesting results… and led to an intriguing research question: if an adult mentor has a positive impact on rate of physical activity in children, what affect would a PEER mentor have? We assembled a team of healthcare professionals to assist in this pilot phase of research.
2010-2011: Phase 2 – Full Research Project (10 Schools)
Following the positive results of our research pilot, we expanded into a full research program, with the addition of a control limb.
2011-2012: Phase 3 – Program Development, Research Analysis and Knowledge Translation (5 Schools)
The success of our research study has propelled us into our next phase; we know our program works and we now need to finesse it into a sustainable format to allow for expansion across the province. We are running H2K as a pure-program in 5 schools whilst simultaneously developing our roll-out model.
2012-2013: Phase 4 – Satellite Program Testing
Our aim for the next school year is to test our program roll-out in satellite schools/centres outside of HRM.
2013-2014: Phase 5 – Provincial Rollout.
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