Dietary factors, particularly insufficient consumption of fruit, 100% juice, and vegetables (F) have been associated with major types of cancer, chronic disease and obesity. Low-income preschool children do not eat the recommended number of FV. There is substantial evidence that children?s food preferences and eating patterns are initiated early in life and parents are the primary influence on the child?s emerging food habits. Few programs have been developed for high risk, low-income preschool children. A very limited number of dietary intervention studies have been conducted in preschool children and most have been implemented in child-care settings. None have a strong parental component. None have been family-based. This study will develop and pilot a family-based intervention aimed at influencing the preschool child?s dietary intake through changes in parent FV consumption, availability and accessibility of FV in the home, parent modeling, and parent-child communication.
The Specific Aims are to: 1. Employ focus groups methodologies to learn more about specific factors influencing parent and child FV intake in our target population; 2. Translate discovered knowledge into specific and tailored intervention messages and materials; 3. Conduct additional focus groups to confirm that the intervention messages and proposed delivery channels are salient, culturally relevant and sensitive; 4. Identify implementation, recruitment and retention procedures best suited to the target population; 5. Develop preliminary instruments and protocols to implement and evaluate the intervention; 6. Conduct a pilot survey to pre-test intervention materials and instrumentation; 7. Estimate parameters required to properly design and power an anticipated group-randomized trial assessing the efficacy of the newly developed intervention program. Our goal is to utilize the work proposed in this R2 I application so as to submit a rigorous intervention-evaluation study, under the RO I mechanism.
| Feret, E; Larouze, B; Diop, B et al. (1987) Epidemiology of hepatitis B virus infection in the rural community of Tip, Senegal. Am J Epidemiol 125:140-9 |
