UBC Undergraduate Research

UBC Food Services Healthy Beverage Initiative : Student Survey Wright, Ilan; Bicaci, Dafna; Wen, Ya; Gao, Amy; Shum, Dawn; Dong, Meng

Abstract

Sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) represent a large amount of sugar consumption in Canada (Malik, Popkin, Bray, Despres, Willet, 2010) and the habitual consumption of SSBs is associated with certain chronic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes (Vasanti, Barry, George, Jean-Pierre, Frank, 2010). Previous studies and reports have shown that certain interventions such as taxation, hydration stations and phasing out SSBs can help reduce the consumption SSBs (Jones & Hammond, 2017; Alfred Health, n.d). Healthy Beverage Initiative (HBI), led by various UBC divisions including UBC Wellbeing, aims to promote water consumption and considering phasing-out SSBs across the UBC Vancouver campus. The goal of our project is to understand UBC students’ behaviors and attitudes towards SSBs and gain feedbacks that could help develop the HBI. This was done by presenting background information of the HBI for classes and dining halls at UBC, and administering online surveys. In total, we collected 288 responses and analyzed 965 responses with extra provided by UBC Wellbeing. We identified increasing accessibility in clean/filtered tap water and providing cheaper healthier beverages as the preferred strategies by UBC students to reduce SSBs consumption. Both process evaluation and outcome evaluation have been done to confirm the survey effectiveness and community partner satisfaction. Future evaluation survey for our medium-term objectives is also proposed. We also created a report and an infographic for UBC Wellbeing to present to UBC executives. We hope this will enable the executives to make the decision that best serves the interests of UBC community. Through this project, we learned the importance of establishing a timeline and creating a Logic Model when working on a health driven intervention. We also acknowledged being flexible as essential in order to meet our community partners’ needs and concerns. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

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