Virtual 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: Nutrition technical assistance; Behavioral: Children's environmental health technical assistance

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT04345874

10747

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study evaluates the effect of a fully virtual 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 randomly 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 the effectiveness of a virtual, rural outreach community-based Nutrition Technical Assistance Intervention to enhance meeting CACFP best-practices.

Methods: Conduct a cross-sectional assessment of a random sample of FCCH providers' (n=54) menus and meals served. Foods will be evaluated against the CACFP requirements and best-practices. Trained Extension Educators will implement both interventions (n=27 intervention, n=27 comparison) focused in rural counties, reaching underserved rural and low-income populations. The intervention is based on theoretical foundations and formative interviews, and will consist of two virtual 60-90-minute one-on-one visits with the FCCH and one virtual group class lasting approximately 3 hours.

Enrollment: 69 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 70 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Family Child Care Home Providers who participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program in Oklahoma.
• Providers must serve at least 1 2-to-5 year old child and speak English.
• Providers must plan to continue their business while participating in CACFP for the next 12 months.

Exclusion criteria

• Family Child Care Home Providers who care for only infants and toddlers and not speak English.
• Participant withdraws.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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69 participants in 2 patient groups

Nutrition technical assistance

Experimental group

Description:

three encounters with Intervention team over three months: two virtual 60-90 minutes visits one-on-one with the FCCH each scheduled at the convenience of the provider and a 3- hour virtual group class with other providers.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Nutrition technical assistance

Children's environmental health technical assistance

Experimental group

Description:

three encounters with Intervention team over three months: two virtual 60-90 minutes visits one-on-one with the FCCH each scheduled at the convenience of the provider and a 3- hour virtual group class with other providers.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Children's environmental health technical assistance