Champions for Change

The Champions for Change Program is part of an ongoing effort to improve the health of families and communities in California, especially those that are at greater risk of obesity, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes. Champions include mothers, fathers, grandparents, athletes, youth, pastors, farmers, partners, physicians, and others who are vital to the statewide movement. The Champions for Change Program implements integrated programs and activities including creating mass media campaigns to influence healthy behavior and community-level changes. Champions for Change media campaigns feature real Californians, not professional actors from across the state who despite the stresses of everyday life have committed to make small healthy changes.

The Network for a Healthy California has partnered with more than 200 organizations statewide to create Champions for Change, a social marketing campaign designed promote fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity and food security, with the goal of preventing obesity and other chronic diseases. This campaign is a recreation of the former California 5 a Day Campaign, and now reflects the new federal guidelines for health.

The goal of the movement of Californians who are becoming Champions for Change are: 1. Eating Healthy; 2. Moving More; 3. Drinking more water and fewer sugary drinks; 4. Using CalFresh benefits to help buy healthier foods for your family; 5. Connecting with other Champions for Change.

A program using social media and integrated grassroots activities can potentially successfully influence healthy behavior and community-level changes when it comes to eating and drinking healthier and exercising more.

The original California 5 a Day Campaign intervention was implemented in Fresno, CA and 338 Latinos were surveyed to assess the effectiveness of the social marketing campaign. Riverside and San Bernardino served as comparison communities and 337 Latinos were surveyed. The exposed and unexposed groups were further divided into English and Spanish speaking categories according to which language they completed the surveys in. The program achieved its goals of spreading awareness, positively changing individual's intentions to eat more fruits and vegetables, and increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables in the Spanish-speaking intervention community. There was significant and positive success in changing awareness of the 5 a Day message within the total intervention of the exposed population (p < 0.01). At the beginning of the study only 30.6% of the intervention population had intentions of eating healthier foods, in contrast at the end of the study in the follow-up surveys the intervention group's intentions significantly increased to 45%. The exposed participants’ intentions to eat 5 or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day had significant and positive correlations within the total intervention (p < 0.01). Also, the Spanish-speaking Latinos in the intervention community experienced a significant increase from the baseline to follow up in the consumption of the number of vegetable servings (p < 0.01) and combined fruit and vegetable servings (p < 0.01). At the end of the four month study, the results modestly showed that community and language interaction positively influenced vegetable and fruit consumption in Spanish-speaking Latinos.