Abstract
One in five Australian pre-schoolers are overweight or obese, meaning the first years of life are vital for obesity primary prevention. Parent child feeding practices impact on children’s dietary intake, which in turn impacts on their weight status. Parents’ child feeding beliefs are heavily influenced by parenting peers. The aim of this cohort study is to evaluate the impact of the Parents in Child Nutrition Informing Community (PICNIC) study on parents feeding practices and diet quality. The secondary outcomes are the perceptions of trained peer educators and education recipients based on their involvement in PICNIC. One hundred parents with a child aged 0–2 years at time of recruitment will participate in peer educator training, then disseminate nutrition and child feeding content to other parents over an intervention period of 12 months, supported by project-specific, evidence-based social media pages and website. An additional 100 new parents, recruited by peer educators, will participate in the study as nutrition education recipients. Both peer educators and education recipients will complete quantitative child feeding surveys before and during the 12 month intervention and a dietary intake survey at a time point 12 months post intervention. Following the intervention, 30 education recipients will be asked to participate in semi-structured phone interviews about their experiences with PICNIC. Peer educators will contribute as co-researchers and active participants in the evolution of the PICNIC model. This study will contribute to enhanced understanding of contemporary health literacy strategies for communicating nutrition and feeding messages to new parents and the impact of these strategies on parents feeding practices and children’s dietary intake in a community setting.
Highlights
Overweight, obesity and associated chronic disease pose ongoing, unsustainable and escalating burden on the public health system, with an estimated annual public health cost to Australia in 2011–12 of $8.6 billion [1]
Factors that contribute to this deviation from the dietary guidelines include parental feeding practices, which impact on diet quality, food quantity and weight gain in infants as young as six months old [5]
The FFKMNC study reported the experiences of new parents (n = 28) in the role of nutrition and educators the education theypeer recruit will education undertake isthe same intervention timelineto(i.e., peer and recipients demonstrated to peer acceptable with new parents share months from the date of their peer educator workshop)
Summary
Overweight, obesity and associated chronic disease pose ongoing, unsustainable and escalating burden on the public health system, with an estimated annual public health cost to Australia in 2011–12 of $8.6 billion [1]. New parents frequently form groups and long-lasting social connections with other parents who have infants of a similar age [34] Such groups, often initiated by child and family health nurses, potentially offer a cost-effective, population level system for sharing of evidenced-based nutrition information, The timing and format of peer parent groups have the potential to maximize uptake and provide a sufficient message dose for sustainable health behaviour modification, as a group’s social support and norms are resistant to change [33]. This study protocol describes the methods for implementing and assessing the effectiveness and end user acceptability of PICNIC, a peer educator model with online and social media components, for engaging parents of young children and influencing the social norms around nutrition and child feeding practices. Project2020, model in partnership, consideration of participant and group characteristics ofand futureproofing with regards to shifting trends and evolving technologies
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