Healthy Buddies: a novel, peer-led health promotion program for the prevention of obesity and eating disorders in children in elementary school.

Objective: We designed and tested a novel health promotion program for elementary schools that was based on peer teaching from older to younger schoolchildren ("Healthy Buddies").

Subjects And Methods: This prospective pilot study compared the effect of our program (2-3 hours/week, 21 weeks) in 2 Canadian elementary schools (intervention: n = 232 children, the whole school implementing the program; control: n = 151). Older students (4th through 7th grade) were given direct instruction from 1 intervention teacher and were paired with younger students (kindergarten through 3rd grade) for the whole school year.