Publications by authors named "J Jurkowski"

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.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study evaluates the Communities for Healthy Living (CHL) trial aimed at obesity prevention in conjunction with the Head Start program for low-income families, focusing on children's health.
  • The trial utilized a stepped wedge design with 16 Head Start programs in Boston, implementing interventions like media campaigns and a wellness program for parents, while measuring child BMI and weight-related behaviors over two school years due to pandemic constraints.
  • Results indicated that, although children's BMI increased during the intervention periods, they showed improved behaviors in sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, water intake, and screen time management.
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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.

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Background: Peer leadership can be an effective strategy for implementing health programs, benefiting both program participants and peer leaders. To realize such benefits, the peer leader role must be appropriate for the community context. Also, peer leaders must find their role acceptable (i.

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Objectives: Consistent with empowerment theory, parental empowerment acts as a mechanism of change in family-based interventions to support child health. Yet, there are no comprehensive, validated measures of parental health-related empowerment to test this important perspective. Informed by empowerment theory and in the context of a community-based obesity intervention, we developed a self-report measure of parental health-related empowerment and tested its preliminary validity with low-income parents.

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