The broad objectives for this research are to study the impact nursing interventions can have on a population at-risk for growth failure and to determine what intensity of nursing intervention is needed to accomplish the goal of improving the growth of children on WIC. Specifically, the aim is to examine if nursing interventions that focus on enhancing the parent- child bond will lead to growth in those parents' children. The project is health related because the researcher will focus on a population that is at-risk for poor health. Children with nonorganic failure to thrive have more days of illness than thriving children. A nonequivalent control-group design will be used. Children on WIC will be chosen from randomly selected county health departments if they are at or below the fifth percentile of weight for height. From the clusters of county health departments that provide WIC services in central Texas, two urban health departments will be chosen, one for the experimental sample and one for the control sample. Likewise, two rural health departments will be chosen, one for the experimental sample and one for the control sample. All children in the experimental sample will be followed by the researcher with home visits during which time the parents will be taught child care, nutrition, and parenting skills. The children in the control sample will receive the clinic-based care that is routinely given to children to WIC. At the conclusion of the study, the experimental sample and control sample will be compared to see if there is are significant differences in total weight gain, rate of weight gain, number of sick days from illnesses requiring antibiotics, Denver II scores, and HOME scores. The parents of children in both samples will be queried regarding their perceptions of the continuity or fragmentation of care they perceived their child received during the study.
| Reifsnider, E (1998) Reversing growth deficiency in children: the effect of a community-based intervention. J Pediatr Health Care 12:305-12 |
| Reifsnider, E (1996) Helping children grow: a home-based intervention protocol. J Community Health Nurs 13:93-106 |
