Abstract
BackgroundDeveloping effective prevention and intervention programs for the formative preschool years is seen as an essential step in combating the obesity epidemic across the lifespan. The overall goal of the current project is to measure the effectiveness of a healthy eating and childhood obesity prevention intervention, the MEND (Mind Exercise Nutrition Do It!) program that is delivered to parents of children aged 2-4 years.Methods/DesignThis randomised controlled trial will be conducted with 200 parents and their 2-4 year old children who attend the MEND 2-4 program in metropolitan and regional Victoria. Parent-child dyads will attend ten 90-minute group workshops. These workshops focus on general nutrition, as well as physical activity and behaviours. They are typically held at community or maternal and child health centres and run by a MEND 2-4 trained program leader. Child eating habits, physical activity levels and parental behaviours and cognitions pertaining to nutrition and physical activity will be assessed at baseline, the end of the intervention, and at 6 and 12 months post the intervention. Informed consent will be obtained from all parents, who will then be randomly allocated to the intervention or wait-list control group.DiscussionOur study is the first RCT of a healthy eating and childhood obesity prevention intervention targeted specifically to Australian parents and their preschool children aged 2-4 years. It responds to the call by experts in the area of childhood obesity and child health that prevention of overweight in the formative preschool years should focus on parents, given that parental beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and behaviours appear to impact significantly on the development of early overweight. This is 'solution-oriented' rather than 'problem-oriented' research, with its focus being on prevention rather than intervention. If this is a positive trial, the MEND2-4 program can be implemented as a national program.Trial RegistrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12610000200088
Highlights
Introductions and Discussion of individual expectations and introduction of MEND 2-4 program individual and practicalities; Introduction of parents/carers to the behavioural model of expectations parenting (customised as the 4Cs model (Causes, Consequences, Consistency and Copying) for the purposes of MEND 2-4)
Our study is the first randomised controlled trial (RCT) of a healthy eating and childhood obesity prevention intervention targeted to Australian parents and their preschool children aged 2-4 years. It responds to the call by experts in the area of childhood obesity and child health that prevention of overweight in the formative preschool years should focus on parents, given that parental beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and behaviours appear to impact significantly on the development of early overweight
This is 'solution-oriented' rather than 'problem-oriented' research, with its focus being on prevention rather than intervention
Summary
Introductions and Discussion of individual expectations and introduction of MEND 2-4 program individual and practicalities; Introduction of parents/carers to the behavioural model of expectations parenting (customised as the 4Cs model (Causes, Consequences, Consistency and Copying) for the purposes of MEND 2-4). Developing effective prevention and intervention programs for the formative preschool years is seen as an essential step in combating the obesity epidemic across the lifespan. The overall goal of the current project is to measure the effectiveness of a healthy eating and childhood obesity prevention intervention, the MEND (Mind Exercise Nutrition Do It!) program that is delivered to parents of children aged 2-4 years. Obesity is seen in even younger children, with rates of overweight and obesity almost doubling in a sample of 114,669 Australian 4-year-olds over the period 1995-2002 [2]. Data from 4934 4- to 5-year-olds from the first wave of the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children revealed that 15.3% of preschoolers were overweight and a further 5.2% obese [3]. The desire for thinness is present in girls as young as six years of age [11] and our research reveals that 4-year-old children are already con-
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