Mitigating Hunger and Food Insecurity Among Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Caregivers of Hospitalized Children

The University of Chicago

Status: Withdrawn

Conditions: Health Behavior

Treatments: Other: Feed1st

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02700802

IRB16-1434

Details and patient eligibility

About

The Feed1st proposed program of research will promote health of informal caregivers with a hospitalized child by testing a self-management intervention that addresses the widely overlooked problem of caregiver hunger. As many as 54% of parents and other informal caregivers of hospitalized children struggle with insufficient food to nourish themselves and their family during and after a hospital stay. Hunger impairs caregiver physical and mental health by depleting energy for self-care, emotional self-regulation, and supportive interactions with the child, the family, and the formal caregiver team. The long-term objective of the Feed1st program is to alleviate hunger and food insecurity among families with hospitalized children. Established in partnership with nursing and chaplaincy leadership at our children's hospital and the Greater Chicago Food Depository, the Feed1st program currently operates self-serve food pantries on four inpatient units and the emergency department in our children's hospital on Chicago's South Side. Since 2010, Feed1st has provided nearly 8500 pounds of food to at least 4,000 individuals and 1500 households via the self-serve food pantries in the children's hospital. Over this same period, our team has also created a system for efficiently connecting families to community-based resources for hunger and other basic needs.

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18 years of age or older and English speaking, the primary caregiver to a dependent child younger than age 18, have been screened for household food insecurity, reside in the 16 zip code primary service area geography,

Exclusion criteria

• Caregivers of children in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) will be excluded to minimize infectious risk to critically ill newborns and their caregivers.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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0 participants in 3 patient groups

Feed1st: Face-to-face provider delivered referral

Experimental group

Description:

In this arm of the study, caregivers will receive usual care and a brief face-to-face referral to the Feed1st program delivered by the provider.

Treatment:

Other: Feed1st

Feed1st: Text message delivered referral

Experimental group

Description:

In this arm of the study, caregivers will receive usual care and an automated brief text message referral to the Feed1st program from the health care provider. The text message referral will align as closely as possible with the face-to-face referral.

Treatment:

Other: Feed1st

Standard of Care

No Intervention group

Description:

Usual care includes passive delivery of information from nursing staff about all available food options in the hospital including the self-serve food pantries in the standard Caregiver FYI Admissions Packet.