WIC Families Research Articles

WIC Toddlers Offered a Healthy Start

The Nurturing Families' Appetite for Fruits and Vegetables program was designed to provide support and information to Vermont WIC families about enhancing family meal practices and improving the extent to which fruits and vegetables are offered to toddlers.

P133: Evaluation of the California WIC Learner Centered Education (LCE) Program

California WIC, in an effort to revitalize its nutrition services, has been using the innovative Learner Centered Education (LCE) approach to group nutrition education in recent years. This project was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, with a focus on the program “Finding the Teacher Within.” The goal of this research was to evaluate whether the comprehensive LCE approach is more effective than the traditional, didactic approach in improving knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy, and consumption of fruits and vegetables among WIC families, based on the hypothesis that this approach will result in greater satisfaction among participants and staff, improvements in attitude, and increased intake of fruits and vegetables. The evaluation was also designed to assess the feasibility of implementing and sustaining the LCE approach. Using a repeated measures controlled study design, data were collected from ten intervention and comparison agencies using seven evaluation tools. Differences between intervention and control groups in stage of change movement, self-efficacy, attitude, knowledge, and consumption were evaluated using a WIC participant survey. An interest survey of agency leaders, cost survey, teacher survey, class design and observation tools, and six participant focus groups were utilized to measure the extent to which LCE principles were incorporated into classes, fiscal impact, and differences in educators' and participants' satisfaction and perceptions. Preliminary results from these tools will be presented, and are relevant for implementation in other WIC agencies across the nation. This project was funded through a WIC Special Project Grant from the California Department of Health Services.

Altering the perceptions of WIC health professionals about childhood obesity using video with facilitated group discussion

Objective To determine if viewing a documentary video, followed by facilitated group discussion, could alter the perceptions of those providing public health nutrition services about the barriers and solutions to addressing the problem of obesity in low-income preschoolers. Design Before-after trial to determine how often study participants could identify any of the 17 barriers and seven solutions targeted in the video and during the facilitated group discussion. Subjects/setting One hundred fifty-five attendees of the 2001 Kentucky Maternal and Child Health Conference participated in the study. Sixty percent were nurses, 24% were dietitians or nutritionists, and 64% had Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) counseling experience. Intervention Participants first viewed a 20-minute documentary video about three families enrolled in WIC. A 40-minute facilitated group discussion followed to highlight the 17 barriers (eg, WIC families are struggling with many demands in their lives that make nutrition a low priority and WIC health professionals “lecture” clients on what they “need to know”) and seven solutions (eg, adjusting WIC counseling to assess parenting skills and to increase sensitivity to clients’ life context and stresses). Main outcome measures/analyses Participants responded before and after the intervention to the same two open-ended questions, one about barriers and one about solutions. Participant responses were coded to count instances of identifying any of the 17 barriers and seven solutions. Results At baseline, 51% of participants were unable to record any of the barriers, and 91% could not identify any of the solutions. After the intervention, 37% could identify at least one more of the target barriers than they did at baseline, and 24% could identify at least one more of the target solutions. Conclusions A documentary-style video, used with facilitated group discussion, can produce a short-term change in the perceptions of those providing public health nutrition services about addressing the problem of obesity in low-income preschool children.