Parent Experiences of Empowerment: Understanding the Role of Parent Empowerment in Child Health Promotion.

Background: Establishing healthy behaviors during a child's first 5 years is essential for healthy growth. Parents are targeted as agents of change because they serve as primary models of behavior during this period. Although parent-focused interventions often target empowerment as a driver of change, our understanding of how parents experience the process of empowerment in the context of child health promotion remains limited.

Adaptation and implementation outcomes of a parenting program for low-income, ethnically diverse families delivered virtually versus in-person.

Driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, many in-person health behavior interventions were compelled to quickly pivot to a virtual format with little time or capacity to reflect on or examine possible equity-related implications of a format that required digital access and remote learning skills. Using a parenting program for low-income families as a case study, this paper (a) outlines the process of adapting the program from an in-person to a virtual format and (b) examines the equity-related implications of this adaptation. Parents Connect for Healthy Living (PConnect) is a 10-session empowerment-focused parenting intervention designed to promote family health for Head Start families.

Exploring a theory of change: Are increases in parental empowerment associated with healthier weight-related parenting practices?

Introduction: Parent health-related empowerment is defined as the process by which parents realize control over their life situation and take action to promote a healthier lifestyle. For decades, researchers have described the theoretical potential of empowerment in health promotion efforts, though few have empirically examined this hypothesized relationship. This study is one of the first to examine the relationship between parental empowerment and healthy weight parenting practices (i.

Summer Weight Gain Among Preschool-Aged Children With Obesity: An Observational Study in Head Start.

School-aged children gain weight most rapidly in summer, but few studies have investigated summer weight gain among preschool-aged children. We fit continuous linear spline mixed models to test for accelerated summer weight gain among 2,044 children attending 16 Boston-area Head Start programs between fall 2016 and spring 2019. Academic year and summer rates of change in modified body mass index z-score differed (P < .