tailieunhanh - Spillovers of Health Education at School on Parents' Physical Activity

As treatment continues, the need to explain the importance of follow-up sputum exams will become more of a priority. As the patient feels better, it is also important to convince the patient that it is important to continue treatment and very dangerous to stop. When the health care worker meets with the patient, the first few minutes should be spent checking to see if the patient remembers the information that was previously discussed regarding treatment of tuberculosis. The information below describes what health education topics should be discussed with the patient on a continuous. | Working Paper Economic Series 10-31 November 2010 UN1VERSÍDAD CARLOS III DE MADRID working papers ----- Departamento de Economía Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Calle Madrid 126 28903Getafe Spain Fax 34 916249875 Spillovers of Health Education at School on Parents Physical Activity Lucila Berniell Dolores de la Matay Nieves Valdes zx Abstract To prevent modern diseases such as obesity cancer cardiovascular conditions and diabetes which have reached epidemic-like proportions in the last decades many health experts have called for students to receive Health Education HED at school. Although this type of education aims mainly to improve children s health profiles it might affect other family members as well. This paper exploits state HED reforms as quasi-natural experiments to estimate the causal impact of HED received by children on their parents physical activity. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics PSID for the period 1999-2005 merged with data on state HED reforms from the National Association of State Boards of Education NASBE Health Policy Database and the 2000 and 2006 School Health Policies and Programs Study SHPPS . To identify the spillover effects of HED requirements on parents behavior we use a differences-in-differences-in-differences DDD methodology in which we allow for different types of treatments. We find a positive effect of HED reforms at elementary school on parents probability of doing light physical activity. The implementation of HED for the first time increases fathers probability of engaging in physical activity in 14 percentage points although it does not seem to affect mothers probability of being physically active. We find evidence of two channels that may drive these spillovers. We conclude that information sharing between children and parents as well as the specialization of parents in doing typically-male or female activities with their children may play a role in generating these indirect effects and in turn in shaping