Participants' Engagement With Telephone Support Interventions to Promote Healthy Feeding Practices and Obesity-Protective Behaviours for Infant Obesity Prevention.

Background

Participant engagement with program interventions is vital to support intended behaviour changes and outcomes. The aim of this research was to investigate participant engagement with the Communicating Healthy Beginnings Advice by Telephone (CHAT) program, an early childhood obesity prevention program that included interventions for promoting healthy infant feeding practices and obesity-protective behaviours

Methods

This study used de-identified CHAT program data of participants who received the interventions

Results

Call completion rate by participants was above sixty percent for all six stages of the telephone support program with more than half of the participants (57%) demonstrating high level of engagement. We found that participants' country of birth, employment status and annual household income were predictors of engagement with the telephone support provided in the CHAT program. The odds of participants' engagement with the telephone support program were 1.68 times higher for Australian born (95% CI 1.07 - 2.62), 1.63 times higher for participants who were employed (95% CI 1.01 - 2.66) and 1.63 times higher for participants with annual household income ≥AUD$80,000 (95% CI 1.02 - 2.60).

Conclusions

Participant engagement with the program interventions was good. Participants' engagement with the telephone support program was significantly associated with certain socio-demographic characteristics. Australian born participants, and participants associated with higher household income and employment engaged significantly more with the telephone support provided in the CHAT program. Additionally, the program engaged more participants older than 30 years of age and those who spoke English at home. The program provided unintended personal benefits to some participants with high engagement level due to their various psychosocial needs such as domestic violence, mental health and sleep related issues. Although not an intended benefit of the intervention, psychosocial needs of participants were met which was a likely factor for mothers' engagement with the program. This is an important factor that needs to be considered while implementing future programs or scale up of this program.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2022 Ekambareshwar, Xu, Rissel, Baur, Taki, Mihrshahi and Wen.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.