BackgroundAdolescent obesity is a major public health concern. Open to all high school students regardless of weight status, HealthCorps is a nationwide program offering a comprehensive high school-based participatory educational program to indirectly address obesity. We tested a hypothesis that the HealthCorps program would decrease BMI z-scores among overweight or obese students, and reduce obesity rates, and evaluated its effects on health knowledge and behaviors.MethodsHealthCorps aimed to improve student knowledge and behaviors regarding nutrition quality, physical activity, sleep, breakfast intake, and mental resilience. Participating students received through HealthCorps coordinators weekly or bi-weekly classroom lessons either for a semester or a year in addition to various during- and after-school health-promoting activities and mentorship. Self-reported height and weight were collected along with questionnaires assessing knowledge and behaviors during 2013-2014 academic year among 14 HealthCorps-participating New York City high schools. This quasi experimental two-arm pre-post trial included 611 HealthCorps and 221 comparison arm students for the analytic sample. Sex-specific analyses stratified by weight status were adjusted for age and Hispanic ethnicity with clustering effects of schools and students taken into account.ResultsHealthCorps female overweight/obese and obese student had a significant decrease in BMI z-scores (post-pre delta BMI z-score = −0.16 (95%CI = (−0.26, −0.05), p = 0.004 for the former; and = −0.23 (−0.44, −0.03), p = 0.028, for the latter) whereas comparison female counterparts did not. The HealthCorps students, but not the comparison students, had a significant increase for all knowledge domains except for the breakfast realm, and reported a greater number of significant behavior changes including fruit and vegetable intake and physical activities.ConclusionsThe HealthCorps program was associated with reduced BMI z-score in overweight/obese and obese female adolescents, with enhanced health knowledge and behavior for both sexes. With its wide reach, this may be a promising program to help combat adolescent obesity in schools.Trial registrationThis study is registered as a clinical trial at the ClinicalTrials.gov registry with trial number NCT02277496 on September 10, 2014 (Retrospectively registered).Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12887-017-0975-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Background: School health curricula should help students choose health goals related to the Dietary Guidelines (DG) recommendations addressing obesity. We aimed to identify characteristics associated with choice of DG recommendation items. Methods: In 12 HealthCorps affiliated high schools, students completed a 19item web-based questionnaire that provided a personalized health-behavior feedback report to guide setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, Time-bound) goals. We examined if gender, weight-status, and personalized feedback report messages were related to student-selected SMART Goals. Results: The most frequent SMART Goals focused on breakfast (22.4%), physical activity (21.1%), and sugary beverages (20.4%). Students were more likely to choose a SMART goal related to breakfast, sugary beverages, fruit/vegetable intake or physical activity if their feedback report suggested that health behavior was problematic (p < 0.0001). Males were more likely than females to set sugary beverage goals (p < 0.05). Females tended to be more likely than males to set breakfast goals (p = 0.051). Students, who had obesity, were more likely than normal weight students to set physical activity goals (p < 0.05). Conclusion: SMART goals choice was associated with gender and weight status. SMART goal planning with a web-based questionnaire and personalized feedback report appears to help students develop goals related to the Dietary Guidelines recommendations.