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Dipti Dev, associate professor of child, youth and family studies and Nebraska Extension specialist, is spearheading a five-year project to help rural child care programs foster healthy eating habits among young children.
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Effectiveness of a Multilevel Rural Community Engagement Model for Improving Children's Dietary Intake in Family Child Care Homes (EAT for Prevention)
Research Team
Principal Investigator: Dipti Dev
Funding Information
Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Award Date: Jul 1, 2024
End Date: Jun 30, 2029
Abstract
Research shows that rural children from socio-economically disadvantaged families are 26% more likely to be obese than their urban counterparts, and obesity is a top risk factor for diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
Early childhood is a formative period for establishing healthy dietary habits and weight trajectories, as such habits and weight predict later health outcomes, pointing to the need to promote foundational healthy eating habits in rural children to prevent obesity and chronic disease.
Given the majority of rural children are enrolled in family child care homes (FCCHs), these child care settings are ideal for reaching rural, low-income children and fostering healthy eating habits.
Using EAT for Prevention — an online program that helps FCCH providers implement responsive feeding practices to promote healthy eating in children — researchers will build rural FCCH capacity to use responsive feeding practices and improve rural children's dietary intake. They will test EAT for Prevention's effectiveness by conducting a properly powered cluster-randomized trial with 200 children, ages 3-5, attending 100 rural FCCHs.
Researchers will collaborate with the Nebraska Department of Education and 13 Nebraska Extension county-based agents to recruit rural FCCHs participating in federal food assistance programs to reach rural children from low-income families. Extension agents will serve as coaches to provide personalized and targeted feedback to FCCH providers based on their mealtime video observations while addressing FCCH provider challenges and children's eating behaviors.
To evaluate EAT for Prevention's effectiveness, researchers will assess rural FCCHs' implementation of evidence-based practices, changes in dietary intake, skin carotenoid score and body-mass index (BMI) scores of children while at child care, and drivers influencing effectiveness.
Researchers aim to use findings from the project to build rural child care capacity for addressing the growing problem of childhood obesity in rural America.
Social, Emotional and Behavioral Well-being, Early Childhood Education and Development
Dipti Dev, associate professor of child, youth and family studies and Nebraska Extension specialist, is spearheading a five-year project to help rural child care programs foster healthy eating habits among young children.