Evaluation of the emergency nutrition response in Malatya after Türkiye-Syria earthquake.

The Türkiye-Syria earthquake struck eleven provinces directly in Türkiye on 6 February 2023. Emergency nutrition care is indispensable for sustaining the lives of victims and rescue personnel. To optimally support their well-being, emergency food must be both healthy (i.

Evaluation of a cluster-randomized controlled trial: Communities for Healthy Living, family-centered obesity prevention program for Head Start parents and children.

Background: This study reports the outcomes of Communities for Healthy Living (CHL), a cluster randomized obesity prevention trial implemented in partnership with Head Start, a federally-funded preschool program for low-income families.

Methods: Using a stepped wedge design, Head Start programs (n = 16; Boston, MA, USA) were randomly assigned to one of three intervention start times. CHL involved a media campaign and enhanced nutrition support.

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 < .

Acceptability and appropriateness of a novel parent-staff co-leadership model for childhood obesity prevention in Head Start: a qualitative interview study.

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.

Development and Validation of a Parental Health-Related Empowerment Scale with Low Income Parents.

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.

A typology of dietary and anthropometric measures of nutritional need among children across districts and parliamentary constituencies in India, 2016.

Background: Anthropometry is the most commonly used approach for assessing nutritional need among children. Anthropometry alone, however, cannot differentiate between the two immediate causes of undernutrition: inadequate diet vs disease. We present a typology of nutritional need by simultaneously considering dietary and anthropometric measures, dietary and anthropometric failures (DAF), and assess its distribution among children in India.

Dietary Variation among Children Meeting and Not Meeting Minimum Dietary Diversity: An Empirical Investigation of Food Group Consumption Patterns among 73,036 Children in India.

Background: Minimum Dietary Diversity (MDD) is a widely used indicator of adequate dietary micronutrient density for children 6-23 mo old. MDD food-group data remain underutilized, despite their potential for further informing nutrition programs and policies.

Objectives: We aimed to describe the diets of children meeting MDD and not meeting MDD in India using food group data, nationally and subnationally.

Communities for Healthy Living (CHL) A Community-based Intervention to Prevent Obesity in Low-Income Preschool Children: Process Evaluation Protocol.

Background: Process evaluation can illuminate barriers and facilitators to intervention implementation as well as the drivers of intervention outcomes. However, few obesity intervention studies have documented process evaluation methods and results. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) requires that process evaluation methods be developed to (a) prioritize community members' power to adapt the program to local needs over strict adherence to intervention protocols, (b) share process evaluation data with implementers to maximize benefit to participants, and (c) ensure partner organizations are not overburdened.