Translating and communicating evidence on allergy prevention in children to parents: implementation study protocol

When seeking advice on allergy prevention in early childhood (Early Childhood Allergy Prevention, ECAP), parents often turn to health and social care providers, such as paediatricians, midwives, and family centres. However, these actors fulfil various, often care-related, roles, and cannot be considered 'health information providers' by default. In addition, although the scientific evidence for ECAP is often known by health professionals, it is not actively communicated. In this study protocol, we describe the planned procedure for the development and implementation of a process to communicate ECAP information to parents, with a focus on reaching out to those from migrant communities. Thereby, we also aim to contribute to the understanding of how to design more robust approaches to deliver health information.

We have chosen the Implementation Research Logic Model as our framework for a multi-stage process. Firstly, we will map regional and local health and social care providers to find potential providers of ECAP information. We will then approach actors from each mapping category for qualitative interviews to assess facilitators and barriers to implementation. Next, we will define actions to ease the implementation process, develop exemplary ECAP information materials for parents, and deliver these to pre-selected health and social care individuals and organizations. Each step will be adapted to meet the needs and preferences of culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Finally, the process will be evaluated for key implementation outcomes (e.g., acceptability, feasibility, effectiveness) by interviewing information providers and surveying information recipients.

From a Public Health perspective, studies seem warranted that investigate how evidence from health research may be effectively communicated to the public, rather than merely focusing on, e.g., intervention development. Also, it has often been highlighted that the dissemination of health information needs to better target those who face the greatest difficulties when seeking advice, i.e. individuals/parents who recently migrated. ECAP is a good use case, as scientific evidence is constantly evolving, and the communication of information is hampered by low awareness of high quality sources.