Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making A Difference

Cornell University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Childhood Obesity Prevention

Treatments: Behavioral: Healthy Children Healthy Families

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04179565

CornellU

Details and patient eligibility

About

The impacts of Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making a Difference! (HCHF) on how low-income parents enrolled in the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program use effective parenting practices to influence children's healthy eating and active play behavior will be investigated, as compared to a delayed intervention control group.

Full description

The Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making a Difference! (HCHF) curriculum is a Cornell curriculum for parents and caregivers focusing on the behaviors most likely to help children avoid unhealthy weight gain. These behaviors include drinking water or milk instead of sweetened beverages, eating more vegetables and fruits, playing actively, eating fewer high-fat and high-sugar foods, limiting screen time, and having sensible serving sizes. The 8-session curriculum uses a learner-centered dialogue approach, hands-on activities and role plays. The study will include 300 participants with young children 3-5 years old in Head Start and childcare programs in New York City using a randomized control design. In period 1 (9 weeks), half the groups will receive HCHF education (immediate education, IE) and half will serve as controls, receiving no education (delayed education, DE). In period 2 (9 weeks), DE will receive education; IE will receive no education and be followed longitudinally for periods 2 and 3. In period 3 (16 weeks), neither group will receive education and both will be followed longitudinally. Data will be collected at each time point using validated measures, including the HCHF Checklist developed by the investigators and complementary measures that assess parenting feeding practices, food behavior in parents, food behavior in children, and parent self-efficacy around obesity prevention behaviors. It is hypothesized that change pre- to post- HCHF will be greater than control groups, and changes in behavior will be retained post-education.

Enrollment: 391 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

• Inclusion Criteria: Parents/caregivers with young children 3-5 years old
• Exclusion Criteria: Any person who does not have children who are 3-5 years old

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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391 participants in 2 patient groups

Immediate intervention

Active Comparator group

Description:

The immediate education (IE) group will receive the intervention, Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making a Difference! in period 1. In period 2, IE will receive no education and will be followed longitudinally for periods 2 and 3.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Healthy Children Healthy Families

Delayed intervention

Active Comparator group

Description:

The delayed education (DE) group will serve as controls in period 1, receiving no intervention. In period 2, the treatments will cross over, so DE will receive the Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making a Difference! intervention.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Healthy Children Healthy Families