Conclusion The findings suggest that the AFLY5 school based intervention is not effective at increasing levels of physical activity, decreasing sedentary behaviour, and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in primary school children.
We note that alternatives to CHW home visits such as cell phone-based interventions were not tested in the study, though, in theory, they could be more effective and/or less costly than CHW visits.
As the paper was focused on prevention in dental practice, community fluorides (water, milk, salt), public health programs or school-based interventions were not addressed.
3 4 6 8 47 48 Pharmaceutical-based interventions were not considered in this study due to cost and delivery issues found with low-income countries.
Although ratings for paper-based interventions were mostly somewhat lower, differences between computer and paper-based interventions were not significant due to the small sample size (exact Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p < 0.05).
Pharmaceutical-based interventions were not considered as antiviral agents may only be available in limited quantities in a PNG setting, while a vaccination campaign would face significant delay, supply and delivery constraints.
13 The second review also focused on children in the primary school age range (5-12 years), but the authors concluded on the basis of pooled results from 21 (out of 27) controlled trials that school based interventions were effective at increasing fruit but not vegetable consumption.
Home based intervention was found not superior to clinic based care in reducing all-cause death or hospitalization.
In the present study both group based and one to one interventions were not popular.
