LAUSR

Objective To develop a family nutrition ecosystem program to improve parent-child food interactions, family modeling and family food access by enhancing parent knowledge, attitudes and self-efficacy. Description Though childhood obesity is multi-causal, parents help shape children's eating behaviors making them an important target for nutrition education. In the current study, Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) informed the predicted pathways to parents’ health behavior change and the Theory of Diffusion of Innovation informed the planned dissemination of nutrition education information via interpersonal (in-person workshops), mass media (website) and social media. The resulting three-component intervention The Family Meal Project targets family mealtime interactions by applying an empirically supported parenting intervention to parent-child mealtime interactions, while attending to the unique considerations of Latino families representing this growing demographic in the targeted community. Component 1 involves multi-family groups (six, 2-hour sessions) that incorporate principles and strategies from, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), modified for diet behaviors and implemented by Masters level dietetic students. Groups include a family meal (with modeling and coaching), review of the past week, nutrition psychoeducation and goal setting. While parents participate in programming, children join health-related activities facilitated by research staff. Component 2 is a program support website (familymealproject.fiu.edu) available to parents at the start of the intervention and continuously updated to reflect parent feedback. Component 3 is a social-media based nutrition education extension containing food-related messages through Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Evaluation The program will be evaluated during Year 2 using a pre-post intervention design model. Participants will include families (n = 30) with at least one child (4-10 years) recruited from participating elementary schools (90% minority, 95% Hispanic). Repeated Measure ANOVAs and regression analysis will test changes over time. Qualitative data from interviews and focus groups will inform revisions to intervention. Conclusion and Implications We expect parents will exhibit increased knowledge of food and mealtime-related parenting behaviors, increase self-efficacy to provide healthy nutrition opportunities, and enhance their family nutrition ecosystem. Future directions include further testing in a randomized clinical controlled trial. Funding 2018-68001-27552.