Abstract
Obesity continues to disproportionately impact low-income, ethnically diverse youth. Existing government-funded nutrition education programs and pediatric medical clinics can collaborate to target and deliver relevant interventions. The objective was to explore interest and acceptability of community nutrition intervention collocated in medical clinics.
Social Cognitive (SCT) and goal setting theories.
Low-income English and Spanish-speaking parents with young children.
Physicians referred parents of pediatric patients to the intervention. The intervention consisted of 8-weekly, 1.5 hour nutrition, activity and food-related parenting content anchored with guided goal setting, SCT constructs, and story telling. Existing Expanded Food and Nutrition Education (EFNEP) educators delivered the intervention in medical clinics.
To assess interest and acceptability, referral, enrollment, and attendance data were collected and parent focus group interviews were conducted. Descriptive statistics and chi-square analysis were conducted on the quantitative data and interviews were recorded, transcribed and organized for content analysis.
Twenty intervention series were conducted in English (n = 12) and Spanish (n = 8) at 5 medical clinics by 4 EFNEP educators. More than 1/3 of the parents (37%; n = 709) expressed interest in the intervention after physician referral and 74% (n = 195) enrolled in the intervention. A greater proportion of referred Spanish-speaking parents expressed interest (P < 0.001) and completed 4 or more intervention sessions (P < 0.0001) compared to English-speaking parents. A total of 26 focus group interviews (n = 65) were conducted with the 97% of the parents said they enjoyed participating in the intervention. The intervention component most commonly mentioned as useful was guided goal setting.
Results from this study indicated that parents referred to the intervention were interested and attended with greater appeal to Spanish-speaking parents. Acceptability of the intervention can be attributed to the tailoring of the content and delivery by culturally competent educators.