STUDY PROTOCOL article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health and Nutrition
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1593943
The Campus Healthy Lifestyles, Outcomes and Experiences (CHLOE) Study: Protocol for an Observational Assessment of College Students' Health
Provisionally accepted
Alicia Anne Dahl1*
Stacy Fandetti1Trudy Moore-Harrison1Rosalba Chavarria1Maha Raya1Elizabeth F. Racine2- 1University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, United States
- 2Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at El Paso, El Paso, Texas, United States
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As emerging adults transition from home to university campus living, they develop distinct health behaviors, including those surrounding food choice, exercise, and stress management.Concurrently, many college students experience body composition changes and weight gain at rates higher than those observed in the general population. Given that weight gain in college typically tracks into later life, a better understanding of the behavioral and physiological changes that occur during the first year of college is imperative. This protocol describes an observational study designed to assess behavioral and physiological changes among residential first-year college students with a university meal plan over one academic year (2023/2024). The protocol was developed through an iterative process incorporating research staff feedback and a pilot group sample from the previous academic year (2022/2023). Altogether, data were collected from 91 first-year college students at one university in the southeastern United States.Questionnaires were administered at three points in time, covering various individual health behavior topics (e.g., exercise, sleep, and substance use), nutrition literacy, diet quality, and campus food environment perceptions. Trained research assistants collected physical health measurements twice (approximately six months apart) at the university Health Risk Assessment Lab. These measurements included height, weight, blood pressure, a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan, and a blood sample to evaluate markers of chronic disease risk (e.g., A1C and cholesterol). Participants also consented to share data on meal purchases and recreational center visits with their student identification cards. Several research questions will be explored with this data, including the association between health history and campus lifestyle behaviors and the physiological changes that occurred during the first year on campus.
Keywords: college students, Health Behavior, Risk Assessment, Chronic conditions, Public Health
Received: 14 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dahl, Fandetti, Moore-Harrison, Chavarria, Raya and Racine. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Alicia Anne Dahl, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, United States
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