Technical Assistance for Child and Adult Care Food Program in Family Child Care Home

University of Oklahoma (OU)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Behavior; Nutrition Poor

Treatments: Behavioral: Children's environmental health; Behavioral: Nutrition assistance

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03560050

7551

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study evaluates the effect of a nutrition technical assistance training program for family child care home providers on the food they serve young children in their care and the food environment in their home. Half the providers will be assigned to the nutrition program and the other half will receive a comparison on environmental health.

Full description

Early care and education (ECE) providers play a vital role in ensuring that young children have access to nutritious foods. Over 25% of children in ECE (1.2 million children) attend Family Child Care Homes (FCCH). Improvements in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) may introduce new barriers for FCCH, which have limited meal preparation capacity. Limited research has examined foods served by FCCH providers, and no group randomized trials have been conducted using a Community-Based Participatory approach in FCCH and including an evaluation of intervention costs.

Goals: 1. Determine compliance of menus and meals provided in FCCH with CACFP guidelines. 2. Determine the effectiveness of a pilot community-based Nutrition Technical Assistance intervention to enhance meeting CACFP best-practices. 3. Determine the effectiveness of a statewide community-based Nutrition Technical Assistance Intervention to enhance meeting CACFP best-practices. 4. Expand university student opportunities for participation in health research.

Methods: Conduct a cross-sectional assessment of a random sample of FCCH providers' (n=52) menus and meals served. Foods will be evaluated against the CACFP requirements and best-practices. After the cross-sectional examination, providers in the pilot will be randomly assigned to a Nutrition Technical Assistance (n=26) or attention comparison intervention (n=26). Following the pilot, trained Extension Educators will implement both interventions (n=27 intervention, n=27 comparison) in six selected counties, reaching underserved rural and low-income populations. The intervention is based on theoretical foundations and formative interviews, and will consist of two 60-90-minute visits to the FCCH and one group class lasting approximately 3 hours.

Enrollment: 49 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 70 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Family child care home providers within 60 minutes of Oklahoma City who participate in the Child and Adults Care Food Program

Exclusion criteria

• none

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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49 participants in 2 patient groups

Behavioral: Nutrition assistance

Experimental group

Description:

three encounters with Intervention team over three months: two home-based visits for 90 minutes each scheduled at the convenience of the provider and a 3- hour group class session with other providers.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Nutrition assistance

Behavioral: Children's environmental health

Experimental group

Description:

three encounters with Intervention team over three months: two home-based visits for 90 minutes each scheduled at the convenience of the provider and a 3- hour group class session with other providers.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Children's environmental health