Enhancing the capacity to facilitate physical activity in home-based child care settings

Healthy Opportunities for Preschoolers (HOP) is a physical activity and movement skill intervention that was developed to address the unique needs of home-based child care providers. The authors used a train-the-trainer approach to enhance local uptake and implementation of HOP and examined the impact on the trainers' (workshop leaders') perceived knowledge, confidence, and intention to implement community workshops and subsequently on the knowledge, confidence, and intentions of workshop participants. This study also assessed feasibility: reach, satisfaction, and facilitators and barriers to workshop implementation. Overall, 92% and 89.5% of the leaders were very or extremely satisfied with the workshop content and delivery, respectively. Training significantly increased their self-reported knowledge (p < .001) and confidence (p < .001). Subsequently, 73% of workshop participants (48 workshops, n = 321) took part in the evaluation; intention to use what they learned after the workshop was high (86%) and perceived knowledge, confidence, and attitude all increased significantly (p < .001). The HOP train-the-trainer approach was feasible and enhanced knowledge, confidence, and readiness to change among home-based child care providers. This approach should be considered as a component of an overall strategy to enhance the promotion of physical activity and movement skills in home-based child care settings.