BACKGROUND
Parents are the primary decision makers of the foods prepared and offered to children. There is a strong association between parent and child fruit and vegetable intakes. Healthy eating and active living interventions targeting parents of young children could have benefits for both children and parents, however there is currently limited evidence demonstrating this effect when the intervention is offered to the community remotely (using digital technologies i.e. telephone or online) as part of existing preventive health services.
OBJECTIVE
To assess the effectiveness of two digital interventions (computer-assisted telephone or online) healthy eating and active living interventions delivered at scale to parents of children aged 2-6 years, for increasing parent fruit and vegetable consumption (secondary outcome) at 9-months post baseline.
METHODS
Parents (n=458) were recruited to a partially randomized preference trial comprising of three arms: 1. Computer-assisted telephone intervention; 2. Online intervention; 3. Written material (Control). This design allowed parents with a strong preference to select their preferred intervention and once preference trends were established, parents were randomized to obtain robust relative effects. Data were analyzed for randomized participants, preference participants and all participants.
RESULTS
At 9-months post-baseline, parents randomized to the computer-assisted telephone intervention (n=73) had significantly higher vegetable consumption compared with parents randomized to the control (n=81) (+0.41 serves/day (95% CI: 0.02 to 0.81), p=0.04). However, there were no differences in vegetable consumption between parents who chose the computer-assisted telephone intervention (n=22) compared to those who chose the control (n=64) (preference participants). No differences in parent fruit consumption were found for randomized or preference participants for either the computer-assisted telephone or online intervention. Similarly, analysis of all participants combined found no differences in parent consumption of fruit or vegetables between either the computer-assisted telephone (n=95) or online (n=218) intervention group compared with the control (n=145).
CONCLUSIONS
There may be some benefit to parents participating in computer-assisted telephone interventions aimed at improving the eating behaviors of their children. Future research is recommended to explore methods for optimizing parent engagement with technology-based interventions, to enable greater health benefits for both parents and their children.
CLINICALTRIAL
UTN: U1111-1228-9748, ACTRN: 12619000396123