Publications by authors named "N Kitos"
Evaluation of a cluster-randomized controlled trial: Communities for Healthy Living, family-centered obesity prevention program for Head Start parents and children.
Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act
January 2023
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.
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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Examine the emergence of differences in sleep duration between infants from different racial/ethnic backgrounds and extent to which differences are explained by socioeconomic status (SES) and sleep continuity.
Methods: Sleep duration and continuity (number of night wakings and longest nighttime stretch of sleep) were assessed for 394 infants in the Rise & Sleep Health in Infancy & Early Childhood (SHINE) birth cohort at one- and six-months using the Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire (BISQ). Multivariable regression was used to estimate associations of race/ethnicity with sleep duration adjusting for individual-level covariates, SES, and sleep continuity.
Background: Childhood obesity is highly prevalent and carries substantial health consequences. Childhood obesity interventions have had mixed results, which may be partially explained by the absence of theory that incorporates broader family context and methods that address implementation challenges in low-resource settings. Communities for Healthy Living (CHL) is an obesity prevention program for Head Start preschools designed with careful focus on theory and implementation.
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