Parent education in youth-directed nutrition interventions

Area of Science:

• Nutrition Education
• Primary Prevention
• Parental Involvement in Child Health

Background:

• Parental involvement is crucial for children's dietary changes in nutrition interventions.
• Recruiting and maintaining parent participation can be challenging.
• Youth-directed nutrition programs often include parent components.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of two youth-directed nutrition interventions with parent components on parents.
• To compare a classroom curriculum (Hearty Heart and Friends) with a parent-taught, mailed-home approach (Hearty Heart Home Team).

Main Methods:

• The study evaluated two interventions: a classroom curriculum and a parent-taught home program.
• Incentives were used to achieve high participation rates (85.6%) in the parent-taught program.
• Parental outcomes were assessed in areas including knowledge, attitudes, communication, and home food environment.

Main Results:

• The parent-taught intervention significantly improved parental knowledge about diet and heart disease.
• Parental attitudes (efficacy, intention, outcome expectation, modeling) and parent-child communication were positively impacted by the parent-taught approach.
• The parent-taught approach led to significant improvements in the home food environment, with more encouraged foods and positive choices.

Conclusions:

• Parent-taught nutrition interventions can be highly effective in engaging parents and improving their knowledge and attitudes.
• Home-based, parent-delivered nutrition education is more impactful than school-based curricula alone for influencing parental behavior and the home food environment.
• Strategies to enhance parental involvement, such as incentives, are vital for successful youth nutrition interventions.